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THE MANY SIDED ROOSEVELT 



THE 
MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

AN ANECDOTAL BIOGRAPHY 

BY 
GEORGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS 



It is only through labour and 
painful effort, by grim energy 
and resolute courage, that we 
move on to better things. — 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1907 



L~ ■ 



J 



UBKftRY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

M.AH SI 1907 
cor-ra. 



Copyright, 1907 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 



Published March, 1907 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



Mr. Roosevelt is the kind of man about 
whom myths grow up. Even now there is a 
tendency to ideaHse him, illustrated by the 
remark of a discriminating lady to whom this 
book was read in manuscript. When I came 
to an instance of the Presidents unconven- 
tional way of doing things she said: 

"I would not put that in." 

"Why not.?" I asked. 

"Because I don't like to think that the man 
who is President of the United States ever did 
things that way." 

"Why not," I persisted, "if that is the way 
he did things .?" 

"Oh, I know he is just like that," she ex- 
plained, "but I don't think I'd leave that in. 
I don't like it." 

Unless a record of the true man is made, here 



vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

and now, while we know what manner of man 
he is, those who come after will know only 
the ideal Roosevelt ; and in a hundred years or 
so the men in the hbraries will be rummaging 
over the documents to discover what sort of a 
man the "real Roosevelt" was. The intimate 
contemporary history which is now making 
in newspapers and magazines and in the gos- 
sip of acquaintances is recorded, when recorded 
at all, in such a perishable manner that it will 
have crumbled into dust by the time the his- 
torian would give all he is worth to get hold 
of it. 

If this book has any excuse it lies in a de- 
sire to preserve a portrait of the real man, the 
man whom his contemporaries know, and to 
show him as he behaves every day. It may 
be charged that it is a flattering portrait, as 
little notice has been taken of the criticisms 
of partisan opponents or of the unpleasant 
tales told by them. These have been deliber- 
ately omitted, for it was not my purpose to 
perpetuate animosities. Some of the things 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii 

recorded may seem trivial, but they all have 
value in creating the picture. It is the multi- 
tude of brush marks, none of them significant 
in itself, that makes a portrait on canvas. I 
am persuaded that such a contemporary por- 
trait as is here presented will be useful to those 
alive to-day, and will be of inestimable interest 
to those who come after. It is only fair to 
say that Mr. Roosevelt himself is in no way 
responsible for what appears, save as he has 
done the things which observers have noted. 
The book has grown out of the material which 
I began to gather several years ago for my 
own information. As it accumulated, it oc- 
curred to me that if the multitude of incidents 
and remarks and impressions could be properly 
arranged they would make such a picture of 
the man as could be obtained in no other way. 
My task has been little more than that of an 
editor who arranges the matter at his liand. I 
have attempted to classify it in such a way as 
to make, so far as possible, a connected narra- 
tive; but from the nature of the case the re- 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

suit is not what it would have been had I at- 
tempted to do more than work a series of anec- 
dotes into a mosaic of narrative. Those who 
wish more complete information concerning 
Mr. Roosevelt's views of the great public 
questions with the settlement of which he is 
connected will find it in his published addresses 
and messages. The wisdom of his policies, as 
they must be tested by time, is a matter for 
future historians to discuss. 

I have been at considerable pains to verify 
the tales that have been told and have had 
correspondence or personal interviews with 
those acquainted with the facts in nearly every 
case. Among those to whom my thanks are 
due for their assistance in this respect are 
General Charles F. Manderson, Senator Henry 
Heitfeld, H. H. Kohlsatt, Esq., Judge Alton 
B. Parker, Baron Speck von Sternburg, the 
Honourable St. Clair McKelway, the Hon- 
ourable S. N. D. North, the Honourable 
Rockwood Hoar, the Honourable Timothy L. 
Woodruff, Justin McCarthy, Jr., Esq., Sena- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix 

tor P. C. Knox, Representatives William P. 
Hepburn, John F. Lacey, and William C. 
Adamson, the Honourable Jotham P. Allds, 
Colonel William A. Gaston, Judge O. J. 
Semmes, Colonel J. R. Nutting, Wilham W. 
Sewall, J. A. Ferris, Daniel Velsor, Ralph 
Smith, and many others. 
January 21, 1907. 



CONTENTS 



I The National Man 1 

II The Developing Man 17 

III The Man of Ambitions 36 

IV The Western Man 51 

V The Strenuous Man 79 

VI The Human Man 116 

VII The Democratic Man 142 

VIII The Literary Man 170 

IX The Military Man 185 

X The Political Man 207 

XI Thj^'PojaticaJjMais! (concluded) 238 



He masters whose spirit masters-he tastes sweetest 
who results sweetest in the long run. 

The blood of the brawn beloved of time is un- 
constraint. 

In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, manners, 
engineering, an appropriate native g^and-opera. 
shfpcraft, any craft, he or she is greatest who 
:„Lbutes the greatest original practical example. 

4C- * * 

Talk as* you like! he only suits These States whose 
manners favour the audacity and subhme turbu- 

lence of -^^-J^^-^^^^^^ chants Den^cratic. 



THE NATIONAL MAN 



Theodore Roosevelt is a force : his enemies 
say an erratic and irresponsible force; his 
friends insist that he is a beneficent and in- 
spiring influence. All, friends and enemies 
alike, agree that he is a force to be reckoned 
with. It is too early yet to decide on the exact 
nature of his influence on his times. We are 
too near him and all other contemporaries to 
judge them accurately. But it is evident to 
all observers that Mr. Roosevelt is very 
human — and very fallible, as all men are — but 
withal, sincere and honest. 

As he has grown with the passing years the 
opinion of him held by his contemporaries 
has changed in many ways. For instance, 
one public commentator wrote of him in June, 
1900, that "Roosevelt is no hero or genius, 
but just a fine, brave, hearty, honest, manly 



2 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

fellow, trained in many schools of life, abso- 
lutely democratic, absolutely American, ambi- 
tious with a high ambition and having a 
singular gift for inspiring a personal liking 
or disliking, as the case may be. There is 
nothing of the dummy or wax figure about 
him. You may swear by him or you may 
swear at him, but you can't be indifferent 
about him. He owes almost as much to his 
enemies as to his friends. Newspapers have 
tried to write him down. He has been sneered 
at, jumped upon, anathematised. He never 
held any but subordinate offices until he was 
Governor, and yet by perseverance, by indus- 
try, by main pluck and essential energy, he 
became a leading figure in the public eye, a 
man to be reckoned with. Reformers and ma- 
chinists have had their quarrels with him. 
Mugwump and unregenerate fists have been 
shaken in his face. All the time he has been 
pegging away at something worth doing, and 
he has tried to do it well, whether he was writ- 
ing books, or legislating at Albany, or cow- 



THE NATIONAL MAN 3 

punching, hunting mountain sheep, or spoils- 
men, or Spaniards." 

In July, 1904, the same commentator wrote: 
"If we were rewriting [the estimate just 
quoted] in the light of his subsequent career, 
we think we should give him credit for the pos- 
session of somewhat more of that indefinable 
quality called genius." 

Indeed, many men who tried to account for 
him began to suggest, in 1904, that he was 
more than an ordinary man. If he should be 
called great by future generations, they will 
doubtless say that his greatness was due to his 
grasp of the basic facts of life and to his in- 
sistence on the fundamental virtues of con- 
duct: namely, that men must be honest and 
decent^ that women must still be proud of their 
motherhood, and that both men and women 
should be patriotic, that is, should possess that 
virtue which conserves the organised state as 
the maternal instinct conserves the organised 
family. His strength, it has always seemed to 
me, resides in the fact that he stands with his 



4 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

feet firmly planted on mother earth, and is not 
ashamed of the old-fashioned instincts and 
emotions. 

Of course, he inherited much from his an- 
cestors, both of intellectual qualities and of 
political traditions. He was born just be- 
fore the Civil War, of a Northern father and a 
Southern mother, each sympathising deeply 
with his or her native section of the country. 
His father, after whom he was named, was 
a pubHc-spirited New York merchant and 
banker, who found time outside of his business 
to interest himself in the work of making good 
citizens of the children of the poor. During 
the war he was influential in securing the ar- 
rangement for the payment of the soldiers in 
such a way as to provide for their families at 
home. After the war, when President Hayes 
was reforming the abuses in the New York 
custom-house, and was saying that the whole 
nation was interested in the businesslike con- 
duct of the collector's office, he selected Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, Sr., as the ideal business man 



THE NATIONAL MAN 5 

for collector. He believed that Mr. Roosevelt 
would transform the office from a political 
clearing-house for the New York "machine" 
into a place for the honest collection of the 
revenues. Senator Roscoe Conkling, however, 
succeeded in preventing the confirmation of 
the nomination by the Senate. 

Nicholas J. Roosevelt, who, in 1811, built 
and navigated the New Orleans, the first steam- 
boat to go down the Mississippi River from 
Pittsburg to New Orleans, was the great-uncle 
of the present Theodore Roosevelt. This 
great-uncle shares with Robert Fulton the 
honour of developing the steamboat. 

The Roosevelt family, originally Dutch, is 
one of the oldest in the country. The first 
Roosevelt came here in 1652, and his descend- 
ants married the descendants of other immi- 
grants till the family became typically Ameri- 
can. Of this matter the President once wrote 
to one of his correspondents : "I myself repre- 
sent an instance of the fusion of several dif- 
ferent race stocks, my blood being most 



6 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

largely Lowland Scotch ; next to that Dutch, 
with a strain of French Huguenot and of 
Gaelic, my ancestors having been here for the 
most part for two centuries. My Dutch fore- 
bears kept their blood practically unmixed 
until the days of my grandfather — that is, for 
a century and a half ; and his father was the 
first in the line to use English as the invariable 
home tongue." 

Mr. Roosevelt's mother was Martha Bullock, 
of Roswell, Georgia, whose family has been 
identified with the interests of the South for 
generations. His mother's brother was Cap- 
tain James D. Bullock, who enlisted in the 
navy in 1840 and rose to the rank of lieuten- 
ant. He resigned to enter the mercantile ser- 
vice with the Cromwell Steamship Company, 
running a line of boats between New York and 
New Orleans. During the greater part of the 
Civil War he was one of the most trusted finan- 
cial agents of the Confederacy in Europe. 
When he died, in January, 1901, it was said of 
him by an acquaintance : "Self -reverence, self- 



THE NATIONAL MAN 7 

knowledge, self-control, were the three pillars 
which supported his life, and as an object- 
lesson in morals and devotion to duty his life 
cannot be too often reviewed, nor can his ex- 
ample be too closely copied by the youth." 
Mr. Roosevelt's own opinion of his kinsman 
was expressed in a letter acknowledging the 
receipt of a newspaper containing an account 
of his death. He wrote : 

The Vice-Peesident's Chamber, 
Washington, D. C. 
Oyster Bay, N. Y., May 31, 1901. 
S, A. Cunningham, Esq., Nashville, Tenn. 

My dear Mr. Cunningham: I thank you 
very much for sending me the copies of the 
Confederate Veteran. My uncle. Captain Bul- 
lock, always struck me as the nearest approach 
to Colonel Newcome of any man I ever met in 
actual life. 

With great regard, sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

At the time of his visit to his mother's home 
in Roswell, on October 20, 1905, he re- 
ferred to this uncle again in an address to 



8 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the townsfolk who had gathered to greet him. 
He spoke to them as "friends whom it is hard 
for me not to call my neighbours, for I feel as 
if you were." Then he described how his 
mother had made him familiar with the place 
and its history and continued : 

"It has been my very great fortune to have 
the right to claim that my blood is half South- 
ern and half Northern, and I would deny the 
right of any man here to feel greater pride in 
the deeds of every Southerner than I feel. Of 
the children, the brothers and sisters of my 
mother who were born and brought up in that 
house on the hill there, my two uncles after- 
ward entered the Confederate service and 
served in the Confederate navy. One, the 
younger man, served on the Alabama as the 
youngest officer aboard her. He was captain 
of one of her broadside thirty-two pounders in 
her final fight, and when at the very end the 
Alabama was sinking and the Kearsarge 
passed under stern and came along the side 
that had not been engaged hitherto, my uncle. 



THE NATIONAL xMAN 9 

Irving Bullock, shifted his gun from one side 
to the other and fired the last two shots fired 
from the Alabama. James Dunwoody Bul- 
lock was an admiral in the Confederate ser- 
vice. Of all the people whom I have ever met 
he was the one that came nearest to that beau- 
tiful creation of Thackeray — Colonel New- 
come. Men and women, don't you think that 
I have the ancestral right to claim a proud 
kinship with those who showed their devotion 
to duty as they saw the duty, whether they 
wore the grey or whether they wore the blue? 
All Americans who are worthy the name feel 
an equal pride in the valour of those who 
fought on one side or the other, provided 
only that each did with all his strength and 
soul and mind his duty as it was given him to 
see his duty." 

On this same trip to the South the President's 
train stopped at Charlotte, North Carolina. 
A committee of ladies, headed by Mrs. T. J. 
Jackson, the widow of "Stonewall" Jackson, 
was present at the station to greet Mrs. Roose- 



10 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

velt. When the President Avas introduced to 
Mrs. Jackson he exclaimed: 

"What ! The widow of the great Stonewall 
Jackson? Why, it is worth the whole trip 
down here to have a chance to shake your 
hand." 

He reminded her that he had appointed her 
grandson, Jackson Christian, to a cadetship 
in the Military Academy at West Point, re- 
marking as he did so, "He is a mighty fine 
fellow, Mrs. Jackson, a mighty fine fellow." 

And Mrs. Jackson, in speaking of the matter 
later, was as enthusiastic in referring to the 
President as he had been in speaking of her 
husband. 

The sympathy of the South with him was 
shown still further at this time when the Presi- 
dent's train reached Mobile, Alabama. It is 
estimated that forty thousand people gath- 
ered in Bienville Square to greet him. In 
their behalf Judge Oliver J. Semmes, son of 
the Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes, 
presented him with a souvenir badge. 



THE NATIONAL MAN 11 

"We, proud citizens of a proud Republic," 
said Judge Semmes, "feel and believe that you, 
as the head of that Republic, will by your 
broad views and judicious actions so unite in 
bonds of friendship all sections of our beloved 
country that Americans will advance till they 
become the foremost of nations and may with- 
out misgiving defy a world in arms. Should 
this awful necessity ever arise, then the sons 
of the South will be found a mighty armed 
camp. Take this little reminder, and when 
you look upon it amid your arduous and mul- 
tifarious duties, feel and know that the people 
of Mobile have buried the past and look with- 
out fear to the future, recognising that you, 
as is shown by your later utterances, are 
President of the North and South, our whole 
country." 

The Confederate veterans in the city had ob- 
jected to taking any part in the welcome 
to Mr. Roosevelt. The Judge had urged 
that they forget the past and unite with the 
other citizens. 



12 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"If any one among you have cause to feel 
any bitterness I ought to be among that 
class," said he, "as the people of the North 
and the Northern press commonly spoke of 
my father as a pirate." 

Mr. Roosevelt's mother was an enthusiastic 
Southern woman, who was as devoted to the 
Southern cause as her brothers had been. Not 
long after the close of the war she visited her 
old home, and was welcomed by her friends 
in Savannah, who were aware of the diffi- 
cult position which she had occupied in the 
North during the conflict. There is a story 
current in Savannah about the way she dis- 
played the Confederate flag in New York un- 
der trying circumstances. It is said that she 
told it herself while on her visit South. The 
story runs that just before the surrender at 
Appomattox the city of New York was aflame 
with patriotism, which found expression in de- 
nunciation of the South for prolonging the 
conflict. Ordinary Southern sympathisers 
took care that their opinions should not be 



THE NATIONAL MAN 13 

expressed freely in any promiscuous com- 
pany. Just about that time Mr. Roosevelt 
decided that his house should be decorated 
with flags in honour of some social function of 
importance. The Stars and Stripes were to 
be hung from every window. When Mrs. 
Roosevelt's room was reached she refused to 
allow the flag to be displayed there. As the 
decorators left the room she got from a drawer 
in her bureau the Stars and Bars of the Con- 
federacy and flung it to the breeze from her 
window. People passing on the street at once 
stopped to look at the unusual spectacle, and a 
crowd soon gathered. It attracted the atten- 
tion of her husband, and he went to the door to 
see what had occasioned it. Then for the first 
time he discovered what his wife had done. 
He went to her room and made an unsuccess- 
ful attempt to persuade her to take in the flag. 
They say that the crowd threatened the house, 
but that Mr. Roosevelt persuaded it to respect 
his wife's feelings and to disperse. 
Thus the present Theodore Roosevelt has In- 



14 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

herited an appreciation of the feelings of both 
sections of the country. This has made it 
easier for him to take a broadly national view 
than it would have been had he come from 
stock entirely Northern or wholly Southern. 
He frequently speaks of his love for the South, 
and when he was younger than he is now he 
resented an attack upon the honesty of motive 
of the Southerners. 

They tell a story in Texas of how he rebuked 
a noisy traducer of the South in Washing- 
ton, soon after President Harrison appointed 
him to the Civil Service Commission, ^e was 
in a company of men one evening when one 
of them referred contemptuously to the South- 
ern people as traitors. Mr. Roosevelt remon- 
strated mildly. But the man insisted that the 
people in the South were traitors. Again Mr. 
Roosevelt protested, saying that his mother was 
a Southern woman and that many of his kins- 
men had engaged in the war on the Southern 
side, and that under the circumstances the 
word "traitor" was offensive to him. The man 



THE NATIONAL MAN 15 

failed to note the expression on the young Civil 
Service Commissioner's face, and used the 
offending word a third time. Thereupon, ac- 
cording to the story as it is told, Mr. Roose- 
velt's right fist shot out straight from the 
shoulder, and hit the jaw of the other man 
with terrific force. He talked no more about 
traitors that night in Mr. Roosevelt's pres- 
ence. 

His inheritance from his mother led him to 
defend the South. His inheritance from his 
father is responsible for the high opinion in 
which he has always held the soldiers who 
fought for the preservation of the Union. 
And it was his Northern heritage, together 
with his contempt for self-seeking politicians, 
which stirred him to write a letter of protest, 
in 1895, against the selection of what he re- 
garded as an unworthy man to speak at a 
Memorial Day celebration in that year. In 
the course of that letter he said : "By the way, 
will you permit me to ask how it happened 
that Senator was invited to deliver the 



16 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

address before the G. A. R., here In New York 
on Commemoration Day ? Senator 's con- 
duct in the Legislature has been such as to 
make those of us who are interested in decent 
poHtlcs feel that his figuring as an orator is a 
deep discredit to any organisation, and that 
an organisation such as the G. A. R., of which 
all good citizens are proud, should be particu- 
larly careful about the guests whom it 
honours." 

The antebellum marriage of a Northerner 
and a Southerner produced a son with national 
sympathies reaching from Canada to the Gulf. 



II 

THE DEVELOPING MAN 

When Mr. Roosevelt was a small boy in short 
trousers he used to play tag in Madison 
Square, New York, which was not far from 
his home in East Twentieth Street. It was then 
a much more suitable place for a small boy to 
play in than it is now. On the east side of 
the square stood a Presbyterian church. The 
sexton, while airing the building one Saturday, 
noticed a boy — it was the youthful Roosevelt 
— peering curiously in at the door, but mak- 
ing no move to enter. The sexton invited the 
boy inside. 

"No, thank you," the little fellow replied. 
Then he added confidentially, "I know what 
you've got in there." 

"I haven't anything that little boys may not 
see. You'd better come in and look around." 

"I'd rather not," said he, after casting a 



18 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

sweeping and somewhat apprehensive glance 
around the pews and galleries. Then he ran 
off to his play again. 

The open church seemed to fascinate him, 
however, and he returned to it again and 
again. When he went home his mother asked 
him about his play, and he told her that the 
sexton wanted him to go into the church, but 
that he kept out. 

"Why didn't you go in ?" she asked. "It is a 
church, it is true, but there is no harm in en- 
tering it quietly and looking around." 

He seemed reluctant to explain, but after a 
little urging he shyly confessed that he was 
afraid lest the "zeal" should jump out at him 
from behind a pew or from the gallery or some 
other place of concealment. 

"The zeal ? What do you mean by the zeal ?^^ 
his mother inquired. 

"Why," the boy explained, "I suppose it is 
some big animal like a dragon or an alli- 
gator. I went there to church last Sunday 
with Uncle R., and I heard the minister read 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 19 

from the Bible about the zeal, and it made 
me afraid." 

Mrs. Roosevelt got the Concordance and 
read the texts containing the word "zeal," 
one after another. Suddenly the child's eyes 
grew big and his voice excited, as he ex- 
claimed : 

"That's it— the last you read." 

It was from the Psalms : "For the zeal of thy 
house hath eaten me up." 

His youthful amusements were not confined 
to playing in Madison Square or to dodging 
"zeal." Indeed, when he discovered what zeal 
meant he seems to have decided that he be- 
lieved in it, and, that he might not be charged 
with plagiarising the Scriptures, he decided to 
call it strenuosity. According to a Philadel- 
phian who went across the ocean with him as 
a boy in 1869, however zealous he might be, 
he did not believe in wasting his energies. 

"One of the first things I remember about the 
voyage," says the Philadelphian, "was that 
after the ship got out of sight of land Theo- 



20 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

dore remarked that there ought to be a good 
many fish in the water. Then an idea sud- 
denly struck him, and turning to me, he said ; 

" 'Go get a small rope somewhere and we'll 
play a fishing game.' 

"I went after the line, and while I was gone 
he thought out all the details of the game, and 
had climbed on top of a coiled cable, for he 
was to be the fisherman. 

" 'Now,' said he, as I handed him the line, 
'all you fellows lie down flat on the deck here, 
and make believe swim around like fishes. I'll 
throw one end of the line down to you, and the 
first fellow that catches hold of it is a fish that 
has bit my hook. He must pull as hard as he 
can, and if he pulls me down off this coil of 
rope, why then he will be the fisherman and I 
will be the fish. But if he lets go, or I pull 
him up here off the deck, why I will still be 
the fisherman. The game is to see how many 
fish each of us can land up here. The one 
that catches the most fish wins.' 

"The rest of us lay down flat on our 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 21 

stomachs, and made believe swim, and Theo- 
dore, standing above us on the coiled cable, 
threw down one end of the rope. My brother 
was the first fish to bite. Then began a mighty 
struggle. It would seem to be much easier for 
the fish to pull the fisherman down than for the 
fisherman to haul up the dead weight of a 
heavy boy lying flat on the deck below him. 
My brother held on to the rope with both 
hands and wrapped his legs around it grape- 
vine fashion. Theodore braced his feet on the 
coiled cable, stiffened his back and held on, 
but did not pull much. Of course the fish 
pulled hard. He rolled over on his back, pull- 
ing and twisting, just as Theodore hoped he 
would do. You see, all this time, while my 
brother w^as using his strength, Theodore 
simply stood still and let him tire himself out. 
Before lonsf the fish was so out of breath that 
he could not pull any longer. Besides, the 
rope cut his hands and made them sore. Then 
the fisherman began slowly and steadily to 
pull on the line, and in a very few minutes he 



2-2 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

had my brother up beside him on the coil of 
cable." 

A large part of his youth was spent at Oyster 
Baj^, where his permanent home now is, and 
the people there have many recollections of his 
active boyhood. It would be difficult for one 
to decide, perhaps even for the people them- 
selves to tell, how much of their remembrance 
of his doings there is affected by their desire 
to recall something which gave promise of fu- 
ture achievement. At any rate, the tales they 
tell disclose characteristics of perseverance 
and determination, which must have mani- 
fested themselves early. An incident described 
by Daniel Velsor is typical of many. 

Mr. Velsor was working on the bar that sep- 
arates Oyster Bay harbor from Long Island 
Sound one day in 1873, when young Roose- 
velt, in a blue swimming suit, with the arms 
cut off at the shoulders, came up along the 
beach in a small boat. The wind was blow- 
ing and the waves were smacking against the 
small craft, sending the spray all over the boy. 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 23 

He asked Mr. Velsor to help him across the 
bar into the sound, as he wished to row around 
Center Island. Mr. Velsor advised him not to 
attempt to go outside, as the sound was rough 
and a storm was threatening. 

"And if anything should happen to you out 
there, I should be to blame if I helped you," he 
concluded. 

"All right," the boy replied, "if you won't 
help me I'll have to do it myself." 

He ran the bow of the boat up on the sand, 
jumped out, and began to haul it along, dig- 
ging his bare feet into the ground to get a 
better purchase. At each pull the boat would 
move a foot or two. When the boat was about 
half way across Mr. Velsor decided that it 
would be better to save the boy's strength, as 
he seemed determined to go anyway, so he 
helped him for the rest of the way. 

Young Roosevelt then tried to launch the 
boat, but the waves were so high that he was 
spilled out the first time, and both boat and 
boy were driven back ashore. The second at- 



24 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

tempt was no more successful than the first, 
but the third time he succeeded. The boat 
went out of sight in the trough of the waves, 
reappearing on their crest, but the boy man- 
aged to keep it head on. Mr. Velsor watched 
him till he was convinced that young Roosevelt 
was able to take care of himself. Then he 
went back to his work. 

The boy was not drowned, but by all the rules 
of amateur seamanship he ought to have been. 
Besides boating at Oyster Bay, he studied 
botany in the fields and hunted such small 
game as was to be found there. He began 
hunting larger game in these days, too. He 
has written that his "first attempt at big-game 
shooting when a boy was 'jacking' for deer in 
the Adirondacks on a pond or small lake sur- 
rounded by the grand Northern forests of 
birch, beech, pine, spruce and fir. I killed a 
spike buck, and while I have never been will- 
ing to kill another in this manner, I cannot say 
that I regret having once had the experience. 
The ride over the glossy, black water, the 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 25 

witchcraft of such silent progress through 
the mystery of the night cannot but impress 
one." It was the kind of an experience to ap- 
peal to an imaginative youth. 

He survived many other adventures, and 
went to college, entering Harvard University 
in the class of 1880, not a very strong youth, 
but with an unusual amount of energy. We 
hear of him, in 1877, as one of twelve mem- 
bers of the sophomore class "prominently men- 
tioned," as the politicians say, for the editorial 
board of the Harvard Advocate. A commit- 
tee was appointed to inquire into the fitness 
of the men for the places, that the board might 
vote with intelligence. When the editors came 
together to hear the reports, the man who had 
looked into the qualifications of young Roose- 
velt said : 

"I cannot see that he is the kind of man we 
want. Although I find that he is a thoroughly 
good fellow and much liked by his classmates, 
I do not believe that he has much literary in- 
terest. He spends his spare time clipping off 



26 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

pieces of rock and examining strata, catching 
butterflies and bugs, and would, I think, be 
better suited for a scientific society than for 
us." 

The board sustained this view, and instead of 
Roosevelt, elected a man w^ho has since won 
considerable fame as a writer of fiction. Later 
in his course, however, Mr. Roosevelt was 
elected to the board, but did little editorial 
work. 

Further evidence of his early bent comes 
from Mr. William W. Sewall, of Island Falls, 
Maine, who later went West with him to his 
ranch on the Little Missouri River, in Dakota 
Territory. While still a student he was sent 
into the Maine woods in charge of Sewall, who 
was told that "he was a young college student, 
out of health, but gritty and headstrong." 
Sewall says that in those days the youth always 
insisted that "he was going to be a naturalist." 

The reason for this purpose is doubtless 
found in his physical condition at the time. 
He sought some occupation that would not 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 27 

compel hiin to remain indoors, for he had de- 
termined to get a strong body, if that were 
possible. 

"When I was a youngster," he said once, "I 
was pigeon-chested and asthmatic. Exercise 
has knocked all that out of me — exercise and 
being in the open air." 

His hunting books show the results of his 
observation of nature about him. They are 
not mere tales of hunting. One might call 
them the diversions of a naturalist, so keen a 
love for the things of nature do they dis- 
close. It is not the ordinary hunter or ranch- 
man who would interrupt his story of cattle 
and game to write such a passage as this about 
song birds : 

The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher 
order [than the plains skylark], deserving to 
rank with the best. Its song has length, va- 
riety, power, and rich melody ; and there is in 
it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness inex- 
pressibly touching. Yet I cannot say that 
either song would appeal to others as it appeals 
to me, for to me it comes forever laden with 



28 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

a hundred memories and associations ; with the 
sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with 
the breath of the cold morning winds blowing 
across lonel}^ plains, with the scent of flowers 
on the sunlit prairie, with the motion of fiery 
horses, with all the strong thrill of eager and 
buoyant life. I doubt if any man can judge 
dispassionately of the bird songs of his own 
country ; he cannot disassociate them from the 
sights and sounds of the land that is so dear 
to him. 

And this brief quotation from "A Trip on the 
Prairie" shows that he saw more than game on 
his hunting trips : 

Getting up and loosing Manitou [his horse] 
to let him feed round where he wished and 
slake his thirst, I took the rifle, strolled up 
the creek valley a short distance and turned off 
out on the prairie. Nothing was in sight in 
the way of game, but overhead a skylark was 
singing, soaring above me so high that I 
could not make out his form in the grey morn- 
ing light. I listened for some time, and the 
music never ceased for a moment, coming down 
clear, sweet, and tender from the air above. 
Soon the strains of another answered from a 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 29 

little distance off, and the two kept soaring 
and singing as long as I stayed to listen ; and 
when I walked away I could still hear their 
notes behind me. 

Only a naturalist would note the small plains 
animals as he has done in one of the chapters 
in "The Wilderness Hunter." He writes that 
the ordinary cowboy or hunter pays little heed 
to the smaller birds or to many of the smaller 
mammals. He continues : 

The prairie-dogs he cannot help noticing. 
With the big pack-rats also he is well ac- 
quainted, for they are handsome, with soft 
grey fur, large ej^es, and bushy tails; and, 
moreover, no one can avoid remarking their 
extraordinary habits of carrying to their bur- 
rows everything bright, useless and portable, 
from an empty cartridge-case to a skinning 
knife. But he knows nothing of mice, shrews, 
pocket gophers, or weasels ; and but little even 
of some large mammals with very marked 
characteristics. Thus I have met but one or 
two plainsmen who knew anything of the curi- 
ous plains ferret, that rather rare weasel-like 
animal, which plays the same part on the plains 
that the mink does by the edges of all our 



30 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

streams and brooks, and the tree-loving sable 
in the cold Northern forests. 

His eyes were continually alert for the un- 
usual when on hunting excursions. Once 
while in the Selkirks after caribou with a 
hunter and an Indian guide he amused him- 
self while resting after lunch by getting a 
specimen of rare animal life for a friend. He 
says: 

I was sitting on a great stone by the edge of 
the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which 
had come up from a short flight — I can call it 
nothing else — underneath the water, and was 
singing sweetly from a spray-splashed log. 
Suddenly a small animal swam across the little 
pool at my feet. It was less in size than a mouse, 
and as it paddled rapidly underneath the water 
its body seemed flattened like a disk and was 
spangled with tiny bubbles like specks of 
silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare little 
beast. I sat motionless and watched both the 
shrew and the water-wren — water-ousel, as it 
should rightly be named. The latter, em- 
boldened by my quiet, presently flew by me 
to a little rapids close at hand, lighting on a 
round stone and then slipping unconcernedly 



mM 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 31 

into the swift water. Anon he emerged, stood 
on another stone, and trilled a few bars, 
though it was late in the season for sing- 
ing, and then dived into the stream again. 
. . . In a minute or two the shrew caught my 
eye again. It got into a little shallow eddy 
and caught a minute fish, which it carried to 
a half-sunken stone and greedily devoured, 
tugging voraciously at it as it held it down 
with its paws. Then its evil genius drove it 
into a small puddle alongside the brook, where 
I instantly pounced on it and slew it, for I 
knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Washing- 
ton who would have coveted it greatly. 

Although he did not become a professor of 
natural history, it is evident that his love for 
nature began early and continued late. 

While in college he went in for athletics as 
well as for the other sciences, and he believed 
in exercise for others as well as for himself. 
In his sophomore year some one entered the 
name of his classmate, William A. Gaston, in 
a wrestling match in the college games without 
Gaston's knowledge. Gaston did not learn 
that he was entered until a few days be- 



32 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

fore the match was to come off, and wished 
to withdraw, but Roosevelt persuaded him 
to stay in, promising to coach him. Ac- 
cordingly Roosevelt hunted up fellows to 
wrestle with Gaston, rubbed him down 
after the bouts, and in general acted as his 
trainer. One Saturday Gaston met four other 
men in the gymnasium to be "tried out." 
He threw two of them twice, one of them once, 
and was thrown twice by the other one. In 
the final matches the victor had to throw his 
opponent twice out of three times. The 
rules, however, were rather loose then, as ath- 
letic sports were not in the present highly 
organised condition. In a day or two Roose- 
velt and Gaston learned that Gaston had been 
put on the final programme to wrestle with the 
man whom he had thrown once, as though this 
man were a new candidate. This did not seem 
fair either to the wrestler or to his trainer, and 
they decided to enter a protest. 

As they were about to appear before the ath- 
letic committee Roosevelt said: 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 33 

"You are too hot-headed, Gaston, to state the 
case. What it needs is cold, hard logic. Let 
me present the case calmly, and then we shall 
be more likely to win. They can't help see- 
ing how unjust it is to make you throw that 
man three times, when he will win if he throws 
you only twice." 

Roosevelt accordingly stated the case, be- 
ginning with an assumption of judicial calm, 
but before he got through with the discussion 
he had threatened to thrash two of the mem- 
bers of the committee. The outcome, how- 
ever, was as he had predicted. The committee 
saw the force of his arguments and the pro- 
gramme was changed. 

Roosevelt had considerable faith in Gaston's 
ability, for he backed him in a sparring bout 
with Ramon Guiteras, the champion middle- 
weight of the college. Guiteras was large and 
heavy, too heavy, indeed, for his class, and 
Gaston was a light-weight, and under weight 
at that. Roosevelt believed that Gaston's grit 
and perseverance would win over the other 



34 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

man's greater weight. The series of bouts in 
which this match occurred attracted a good 
deal of attention. Interest centred especially 
in this bout between the light-weight and the 
middle-weight. And there was much gratifi- 
cation among their friends when Roosevelt's 
judgment was vindicated by Gaston's victory. 
To this period of his life belongs what might 
be called the episode of the rooster. He liked 
fighting cocks ; whether he ever fought them 
does not appear, and he had some in Maine. 
One of the cocks escaped from its coop and 
wandered about the village streets, feeding as 
it went along. Roosevelt attempted to catch 
the fowl, but this was not easy, for it flew over 
the fences and rushed through the yards, and 
the faster Roosevelt ran, the more excited the 
fowl became, until in its terror it flew into 
the second-story window of a house, frighten- 
ing half out of her wits an old woman who was 
in bed in the room. Roosevelt, instead of 
going in by the door, got a ladder and fol- 
lowed the fowl into the house by way of the 



THE DEVELOPING MAN 3-> 

window. He soon came out the same way with 
the bird squawking and strugghng under his 
arm. He said that he could not have suc- 
ceeded in catching it if it had not run under 
the old woman's bed. He cornered it there and 
then crawled under and brought it out. 

When he left college he went to Europe and 
studied in Dresden. In his spare time he took 
a walking tour, swimming rivers as he came 
to them and climbing such mountains as 
pleased his fancy. In recognition of his 
achievements in ascending the Jungfrau and 
the Matterhorn he was elected a member of 
the London Alpine Club. 

On his return to the United States, he was 
ready to enter upon the serious work of life, 
with a mind well trained by the discipline of 
four years in college, his outlook broadened 
by European travel, and with a body that 
would respond to the demands of his will, a fine 
example of the man described in Juvenal's 
famous aphorism. 



Ill 

THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 

As far as the records show, Mr. Roosevelt's 
chief ambition has been to be of service. Just 
how did not matter much, as long as he accom- 
plished something for the good of his genera- 
tion. He did not consent to become a candi- 
date for membership in the New York Legis- 
lature the year after he left college until he 
had been persuaded that it was his duty. The 
district leader who induced him to accept the 
nomination has said that Mr. Roosevelt ob- 
jected to going into politics in that way and 
urged several other candidates upon him ; but 
before the interview was ended, the leader, act- 
ing on the suggestion of an acquaintance 
who knew the j'oung man thoroughly, had 
told him that he owed it to the city to accept 
the nomination. 
"You go and see those other men," said Mr. 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 37 

Roosevelt. "One of them ought to take the 
nomination, and any of them would stand a 
better chance of election than I would. But 
if they won't accept, why then maybe I'll 
run." 

"I had him where I wanted him, then," said 
the leader afterward, in telling of the inter- 
view. "And I didn't trouble myself to see the 
other men. After a decent time I went back 
and told him he would have to take the nomina- 
tion, and he did." 

When he left college he began the study of 
law in the office of his uncle, Robert B. Roose- 
velt, in New York, intending to practise that 
profession. This uncle was nominated as a 
Democratic Presidential elector from the 
Twelfth Congressional District of New York 
in 1904, but declined to serve, setting forth 
his reasons in a letter containing this pleasant 
reference to his nephew : "While I differ with 
the President and the party with which he is 
associated as to certain fundamental principles 
of public policy, I have the highest apprecia- 



38 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

tion of him personally and of his unselfish and 
unquestioned devotion to the public good. I 
feel that while he is a candidate of that party 
for the highest position in official life, our 
family relations and the strong personal affec- 
tion which I have 'for him would make it im- 
proper and unbecoming in me to take any 
part in the approaching national canvass." 

Before he had been in Robert Roosevelt's law 
office long enough to take his examination for 
admission to the bar, he was elected to the 
State Legislature, and he never practised law. 
He had ideas, however, on the way to win suc- 
cess at the bar, for he expressed them a few 
years later for the benefit of a struggling 
young lawyer. 

"If I were you," he said, "I would hang out 
my shingle and get a case. I don't care how 
you get it. Your own wits ought to find one, 
at least, which no other lawyer has. I would 
not take a justice-shop case, either. I would 
find a case that was right up in the regular 
courts and which possessed some merit. I 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 39 

wouldn't take it up for nothing, either, or on 
a contingency. I would have a decent fee at- 
tached to it. In other words, I would have as 
many respectable features attached to the 
case as possible under the circumstances. 

"Having got that case, I would try it as if it 
were the last case I ever expected to have or 
which would ever be in the courts. I would 
not make a nuisance of myself — you know 
enough to avoid that — but you can be so per- 
sistent that you will win the respect of every 
one who in any way comes in connection with 
the trial. Put all of yourself into the case. 
Get every side of it, and above all things, 
hammer it into your client by the force of your 
actions that your integrity is above reproach. 

"When you get done with the case you will 
have a reputation that many lawyers devote 
years in other ways trying to obtain. You 
will find that a second case is certain to come 
to you whether you lose or win the first case. 
I would treat the second case just as I did the 
first one. Live and act as if there never were 



40 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

such a case in existence before, and master it, 
just as jou are required to master your 
studies at the law school. If jou find yourself 
weakening at all, use the spur and whip until 
you have created an enthusiasm in your work 
that imparts itself to client, court, and jury, 
and results in your victory. 

"Go at the third case in the same way. And 
for the matter of that, as your patronage 
increases, give the same treatment to all your 
cases. You will create confidence in yourself 
that will insure you a constant practice, and 
your clients, once secured, will never leave 
you." 

It may be worth while noting that this theory 
worked, for the young man put it into prac- 
tice and won his first case on a technical point 
which all the other lawyers had overlooked. 
Mr. Roosevelt himself finally settled upon 
literature as a profession, after reaching the 
conclusion that there was no room in politics 
for such a man as he. He expressed himself 
on this subject quite emphatically as long ago 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 41 

as April, 1884, just after his remarkable 
triumph in the Republican State convention 
in Utica, New York, which elected him as one 
of the four delegates-at-large from the State 
to the national convention. He was then only 
twenty-five years old and had within a few 
months suffered a double bereavement in the 
death of his first wife and of his mother. Con- 
sequently this letter, which he wrote to Mr. 
S. N. D. North, then managing editor of the 
Utica Herald, is almost as remarkable as the 
personal triumph to which it refers. 

State of New York, 
Assembly Chamber, 
Albany, April 30, 1884. 
Dear Mr. North : I wish to write you a few 
words just to thank you for your kindness 
towards me, and to assure you that my head 
will not be turned by what I well know was a 
mainly accidental success. Although not a 
very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in 
my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter 
and joy too keen to allow me to become either 
cast dov, n or elated for more than a very brief 
period over any success or defeat. 



42 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

I have very little expectation of being able 
to keep on in politics ; my success so far has 
only been won by absolute indifference to my 
future career; for I doubt if any one can 
realise the bitter and venomous hatred with 
which I am regarded by the very politicians 
who at Utica supported me, under dictation 
from masters who were influenced by political 
considerations that were national and not local 
in their scope. I realise very thoroughly the 
absolutel}'' ephemeral nature of the hold I have 
upon the people, and the very real and posi- 
tive hostility I have excited among the poli- 
ticians. I will not stay in public life unless 
I can do so on my own terms ; and my ideal, 
whether lived up to or not, is rather a high 
one. 

For very many reasons I will not mind going 
back into private life for a few years. My 
work this winter has been very harassing, and 
I feel both tired and restless ; for the next few 
months I shall probably be in Dakota, and I 
think I shall spend the next two or three years 
in making shooting trips, either in the far 
West or in the Northern woods — and there 
will be plenty of work to do writing. 
Very truly yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 43 

In 1893, nine years later, he wrote another 
letter in a similar vein. He was then a mem- 
ber of the National Civil Service Commission. 
Since writing the first he had been an unsuc- 
cessful candidate for the mayoralty of New 
York, and had been devoting his time to 
ranching, hunting, and writing, as he had told 
Mr. North he expected to do. In the course 
of this second letter he frankly declares that 
"my career is that of a literary man." Here 
is the letter: 

If a man has political foresight, who lives 
in a district w^here the people think as he does 
and where he has a great hold over them, then 
he can seriously go in for a continuous public 
career; and I suppose in such a case it is all 
right for him to shape his public course more 
or less with a view to his own continuance in 
office. I am a little inclined to envy a man 
who can look forward to a long and steady 
course of public service, but in my own case 
such a career is out of the question ; and per- 
sonally it seems to me that a man's comfort 
and usefulness in public are greatly impaired 
the moment he begins to get worrying about 



U THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

how his votes and actions will affect his own 
future. When I was in the Legislature I soon 
found that for my own happiness, as well as 
for the sake of doing good work, I had to 
cast aside all thoughts of my own future ; and 
as soon as I had made up my mind to this end 
and voted simply as I thought right, not only 
disregarding people themselves, if I honestly 
thought they were all wrong on a matter of 
principle, not of men or expediency, then I 
began thoroughly to enjoy myself and to feel 
that I was doing good. 

It is just the same way with my present work 
as Civil Service Commissioner. I believe in 
it with all my heart, and am absolutely certain 
that I could not possibly be engaged in any 
other work at the present moment more vitally 
important to the public welfare ; and I liter- 
ally do not care a rap what politicians say of 
me, in or out of Congress, save in so far as 
my actions may help or hurt the cause for 
which I am working. My hands are fortu- 
nately perfectly free, for I have not the slight- 
est concern about my political future. My 
career is that of a literary man, and as soon 
as I am out of my present place I shall go 
back to my books. I may not ever be called 
to take another public place, or I may be ; in 
any event, I shall try to do decent work while 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS i5 

I am in office. I shall probably enjoy the 
life greatly while I am taking part in it, and 
I shall certainly be ready at any time to go 
out of it with a perfectly light heart.* 

It was evidently not because he liked "the 
quiet life" that he said his career was to be 
literary. Things were not quiet in the Civil 
Service Commission when he was a member of 
it. And he enjoyed the work, as we have just 
seen. When he resigned to become president 
of the Police Commission of New York City 
it was because he thought that things would be 
happening there. As he said to a friend at the 
time: 

"I thought the storm centre was in New 
York, and so I came here. It is a great piece 
of practical work. I like to take hold of work 
that has been done by a Tammany leader, and 
do it as well, only b}" approaching it from the 
opposite direction. The thing that attracted 
me to it was that it was to be done in the hurly- 
burly, for I don't like cloister life." 

* Quoted in New York Trihwie in 1901. 



46 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

He left the Police Commission to become As- 
sistant Secretary of the Navy because he 
thought that there was work to be done in 
preparation for a possible war over Cuba, and 
when war became inevitable, he resigned 
again, to organise a regiment to go to the 
front that he might still be in the "storm cen- 
tre," as he called it. 

After he returned from Cuba he expressed to 
many people his desire to go to the Philippines 
as Governor, to bring order out of chaos there. 
The problem was a difficult one, he knew, but 
its solution was of first importance, and he 
wished to have a hand in it. He was nomi- 
nated for the Governorship of New York in- 
stead. Even after he w^as elected Governor the 
thought of the Philippines was not dismissed 
altogether. It has been said that he expressed 
his desire to go there to Alton B. Parker, then 
chief judge of the New York Court of Ap- 
peals, and that Judge Parker told him that he 

was destined for the Presidency. But Judge 

Parker himself says that though he had many 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 4T 

pleasant conversations with Mr. Roosevelt 
while he was Governor, this one never oc- 
curred. 

During the campaign for the governorship 
he still had the literary life in view as a per- 
manency when he should have leisure from his 
public avocations. When the nomination had 
been made the newspaper men flocked to Oys- 
ter Bay to discover what manner of man he 
was and what kind of life he led there. To 
one of them he said : 

"This house has been my home for fifteen 
years. It is the one place where all my things 
are. Whenever I live anywhere else I simply 
rent a house. Eleven of those fifteen years I 
have spent in government service, so I have 
not stayed here in the winters often. I am not 
certain of being elected Governor, of course. 
If I am not in Albany this winter I shall go 
on with my literary work. I shall go on with 
my 'Winning of the West,' which I am much 
interested in, and I shall start my history of 
the Cuban war." 



48 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

After a winter in Albany, intimately con- 
nected with the making of law, his early love 
for the legal profession returned, and his re- 
gret that he had not given more attention to it 
in his youth led him, when he was elected to 
the Vice-Presidency, to plan to devote to the 
study of the law what leisure he would have. 
He expressed this determination to a friend 
who was wondering what use a man of his ac- 
tive temperament would make of his time. He 
replied that there were good opportunities in 
Washington to read law. He could either 
enter the classes of a law school there, or he 
could read law with some firm in the city. In 
two years he could be admitted to the bar of 
the District of Columbia, so that at the expira- 
tion of his term as Vice-President he would be 
in a position to return to New York to prac- 
tise there. He felt sure that he could then 
make an advantageous connection with a firm 
with a large practice. 

The accident of the death of President Mc- 
Kinley changed these plans, and laid upon him 



THE MAN OF AMBITIONS 49 

new and strange duties. There naturally came 
to him the ambition to succeed himself as Pres- 
ident and to have the approval of the country 
on his administration. This ambition was 
gratified, and when the news reached the White 
House on election night that he had been 
chosen it gave him great satisfaction. 

The pressure of circumstances has forced 
upon him the career that he most desired when 
a young man, and at the age of fifty-one he 
will leave the national capital, after having 
reached the highest position attainable by an 
American. 

What next ? He tells his friends that he would 
like to spend a year or so in travel, hunting 
large and small game in Europe and Asia. 
This would give him a period of rest at the 
close of seven years of arduous labour. After 
that he has declared more than once that it 
would delight him to enter the Senate as one 
of the representatives from the State of New 
York. Two other Presidents have served in 
Congress after the expiration of their term. 



50 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

The first was John Quincy Adams, who was 
elected to the House of Representatives two 
years after he retired and remained in the 
House for many ^^ears. The other was An- 
drew Johnson. He was elected to the Senate 
from Tennessee and took his seat in the special 
session of 1875. He died a few months later. 
What the future holds for the ambitious man 
in Washington no one can tell. But when a 
man is so eager as he to serve his generation, 
it is certain that he will find some way to 
accomplish his desire. 



IV 

THE WESTERN MAN 



Mr. Roosevelt's sympathies with the North 
and the South were bred in him. Indeed, 
he has suggested that some of his tastes 
as well are inherited. "Those of us who are 
in part of Southern blood," he once wrote, 
"have an hereditary right to be fond of cross- 
country riding; for some of our forefathers 
in Virginia, Georgia, or the Ciarolinas have 
for six generations followed the fox with 
horse, horn, and hound." 

His comprehension of the West is his own 
achievement. And curiously enough, this off- 
spring of the old families and the old civilisa- 
tions of the seaboard finds himself in greater 
sympathy with the fundamental democracy of 
the plains than with the more complicated life 
of the East. 

In the West as he knew it, a man stands or 



62 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

falls according as he masters, by his own 
strength, the natural conditions about him. 
The man who succeeds on the plains and in the 
mountains is like the animal which holds its 
own in the forest. He must take what he wills 
from a resisting earth. The life there de- 
velops men who can look with level eyes and 
unabashed upon anything that walks on four 
feet, or on two feet, either. It is a trying-out 
place for developing defenders of government 
by the people, and those who survive are fit, 
indeed. 

Into this country Mr. Roosevelt went in 1883 
to hunt buffalo. He arrived at Medora on the 
Little Missouri River in Dakota Territory in 
September of that 3^ear, and when he inquired 
about the hunting prospects was told that he 
would have to ride fifty miles into a rough, 
unbroken country before finding any big 
game. Saddle-horses were difficult to obtain, 
and were not trustworthy when they could be 
got. Camping in the open was not agreeable 
or restful after a long day in the saddle, and 



THE WESTERN MAN 53 

only strong men voluntarily endured the hard- 
ships of buffalo hunting in that part of the 
country. Mr. Roosevelt did not look like a 
strong man. He is not tall and then he was 
rather slender, as a young man of less than 
twenty-five naturally would be. Besides, he 
wore glasses, which Westerners living in the 
open fortunately do not need till age dims 
their sight. No one was anxious to go hunt- 
ing with the slight Easterner, but finally his 
determination impressed Mr. J. A. Ferris, an 
experienced guide, and he consented to go with 
him. 

"We started out with a hunting outfit to 
the head of Bacon Creek, about fifty miles 
from the railroad crossing," said Mr. Ferris 
later, in describing the trip. "Mr. Roosevelt 
was on horseback, and where he learned to ride 
I don't know ; but he rode as well, if not better, 
than I did and could stand just as much 
knocking about. 

"In making or breaking camp he was as 
handy as a pocket in a shirt and seemed to 



54 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

know just what to do. On the first night out, 
when we were twenty-five or thirty miles from 
a settlement, we went into camp on the open 
prairie, with our saddle-blankets over us, our 
horses picketed and the picket ropes tied about 
the horns of our saddles, which we used for pil- 
lows. 

"In the middle of the night there was a rush, 
our pillows were swept from under our heads 
and our horses went tearing off over the 
prairie, frightened by wolves. Away they 
tore, and we heard the saddles thumping over 
the ground after them. Mr. Roosevelt was up 
and off in a minute. Together we chased those 
frightened horses over the prairie until they 
slackened speed and we caught up with them. 
The night was dark and there was little to 
guide us on our return. Mr. Roosevelt's 
bump of locality was good, and he led the way 
back to camp straight as a die. 

"On the following day we reached our hunt- 
ing grounds, and for several days travelled 
about without being able to get a shot at a 



THE WESTERN MAN 55 

buffalo. On the fourth or fifth day out, I 
think it was, while we were riding along, our 
horses pricked up their ears, as they will do 
when big game is near, and I told Mr. Roose- 
velt that there was a buffalo close at hand. 

"We dismounted and advanced to a big wash- 
out near by and peered over the edge. There 
stood a huge buffalo bull calmly feeding and 
unaware of our presence. 

" 'Hit him where that patch of red shows on 
his side,' said I, 'and you've got him.' 

"Mr. Roosevelt w^as as cool as a cucumber. 
He raised his gun carefully, took aim calmly 
and fired. Out came the buffalo from the 
washout with blood pouring from his mouth 
and nose. 

" 'You've shot him,' I shouted, ^nd so it 
proved, for the buffalo plunged a few steps 
and fell dead." 

He has since shot nearly, if not quite, all 
kinds of big game to be found in North Amer- 
ica, and even now the highest compliment 
which he can pay to a man is to invite him to 



56 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

go shooting with him. Indeed, he took this 
way of indicating his personal admiration for 
the German Emperor, when soon after becom- 
ing President he sent an invitation to him 
through Mr. Andrew D. White, then United 
States Ambassador in BerHn, to hunt with 
him in the Rocky Mountains. He said 
that he envied the emperor for having shot 
a whale, but that if his majesty would 
come to America he should have the best pos- 
sible opportunity to add a Rocky Mountain 
lion to his trophies, and that he would thus be 
the first monarch to kill a lion since Tiglath 
Pileser, whose exploit is shown on the old 
monuments of Assyria. 

Mr. Roosevelt had hot been long in the West 
before he discovered, if he did not already 
know, that the social conventions there differ 
from those in the East. And he had several 
interesting experiences before he convinced 
those whom he met that he was entitled to as 
much consideration as any self-respecting 
Westerner. 



THE WESTERN MAN 57 

One evening after supper he was reading at 
a table in the pubHc room of a frontier hotel 
where he was passing the night. The room 
was office, dining-room, barroom, and every- 
thing else. A man, half drunk, came into the 
hotel with a swagger, marched up to the bar 
and with a flourish of his arm commanded 
everybody to drink. Everybody was willing 
to obey, that is, everybody but Mr. Roose- 
velt. He still sat at the table busy with his 
book. 

"Who's that fellow.?" the man asked, point- 
ing in Roosevelt's direction. 

" 'Oh, he's a tenderfoot, just arrived," some 
one said. 

"Humph," he grunted. Then he turned 
square around and called out : "Say you, Mr. 
Four-eyes, I asked this house to drink. Did 
you hear me?" 

Mr. Roosevelt made no reply. The man 
swaggered over to him, pulling out his pistol 
and firing as he crossed the room. 

"I want you to understand that when I ask a 



58 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

man to drink with mc, that man's got to 
drink," he threatened, fondHng his still smok- 
ing pistol. 

"You must excuse me to-night. I do not 
care for anything to drink," said Roosevelt. 

"That don't go here. You just order your 
drink or there'll be more trouble." 

"Very well, sir," Roosevelt replied, rising 
slowly to his feet and waiting till he was firmly 
poised on them before completing his remark, 
"I do not care for anything, but if I 
must — — " 

With the word "must" he let his fist fly, strik- 
ing the bully a terrific blow on the jaw and 
knocked him to the floor. In an instant Roose- 
velt was astride of him with his knees hold- 
ing down the man's arms. After taking away 
all the weapons he could find he let the man up. 

"Now, I hope you understand, sir, that I do 
not care to drink with you," said the young 
"tenderfoot," who had hardened his muscles 
to some purpose before he went West. 

This is the common version of the story. 



THE WESTERN MAN 59 

]Mr. Roosevelt has referred to the incident in 
tins way : "I was never shot at maliciously but 
once. This was on the occasion when I had to 
pass the night in a little frontier hotel vv^here 
the barroom occupied the whole lower floor, 
and was in consequence the place where every 
one, drunk or sober, had to sit. My assailant 
was neither a cowboy nor a hona fide 'bad 
man,' but a broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap 
and commonplace type who had for the mo- 
ment terrorised the other men in the barroom, 
these being mostly sheep-herders and small 
grangers. The fact that I wore glasses, to- 
gether with my evident desire to avoid a fight, 
apparently gave him the impression — a mis- 
taken one — that I would not resent an in- 
jury." 

His suggestion that the sheep-herders are 
easily bullied is characteristic of a Western 
cattle-men. The cowboys were the real heroes 
of the West in those days, for the care of the 
cattle called into use the manly qualities of 
physical courage and endurance. A success- 



60 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

fu] cowboy must be a skilled horseman, must 
be able to handle a rope, and be at home on a 
trackless range. An amusing reference to the 
persistence of his feeling about the superiority 
of the cattle-men was made after he became 
President. The friends of several applicants 
for appointment as United States marshal in 
one of the Western States were urging the 
claims of their candidates, when the chairman 
of one delegation spoke of another candidate 
as a "sheep-man." 

The President assumed an air of mock solem- 
nity as he remarked: "Gentlemen, that is not 
fair. You should not appeal to my old preju- 
dices as a cattle-man in this way." 

When the Marquis de Mores, whose ranch 
was in the same part of the territory as Mr. 
Roosevelt's, attempted to bulldose him — there 
is no foundation in the story that the Marquis 
challenged him to a duel — he met the situa- 
tion with perfect self-possession. The Mar- 
quis had the reputation of being a "bad man." 
This was because he was a mediaeval French- 



THE WESTERN MAN 61 

man born out of his time, and thought that 
any reflection upon his honour or upon any- 
thing that concerned him must be resented to 
the death. Naturally he got into frequent 
trouble in the democratic surroundings of the 
cattle country and he was not let alone until 
he had killed a man. This did not improve his 
reputation, and when his cowboys and Roose- 
velt's clashed, everybody expected trouble be- 
tween the masters. 

The Marquis justified the expectation by 
sending a messenger to INIr. Roosevelt, bear- 
ing a letter containing the intimation that 
there was a way for gentlemen to settle their 
differences and calling his attention to it. 
This was as near a challenge to a duel as it 
came, but it was near enough. Roosevelt had 
no book at hand on the etiquette of duelling. 
It might have told him that in such circum- 
stances he should reply, "Yours of even date 
at hand and contents noted. Shall be glad to 
meet you under the lone pine at seven o'clock 
to-morrow morning," or words to that effect. 



62 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

He did not think duelling worth while, and, 
regardless of the precedents of an antiquated 
code, he sent word that there must be some 
misunderstanding, and that he would follow 
the messenger in an hour or so to discover 
what it was all about. The Marquis, not to be 
made ridiculous by such a matter-of-fact treat- 
ment of the case, sent another messenger to 
meet Mr. Roosevelt with an invitation to din- 
ner as soon as the reply arrived. The invita- 
tion was accepted, and coffee for two was 
served without the pistols of the old-fashioned 
"affair of honour." 

Mr. Roosevelt had been ranching some time 
when this happened. It was during his buf- 
falo-hunting trip that he decided that the 
countr}^ which supported big game would also 
support cattle, and he made arrangements to 
fatten steers on the land, supplying the cattle 
in the first place to a partner who had a ranch. 
Later he acquired two ranches and persisted in 
the business for some years, notwithstanding 
the severe losses he sustained through the de- 



THE WESTERN MAN 63 

structlon of his cattle by blizzards. He lived 
and worked among his men and was like them 
save that he carried a razor and read good 
literature. He usually carried a book or two 
with him on his hunting trips or whenever he 
expected to be away from the ranch-house for 
any great length of time. He had pocket 
editions of Burns and Shakespeare and other 
classics. On one occasion while he was hunt- 
ing for a lost horse, he was overtaken at 
night by a snowstorm and took refuge in a 
deserted hut in company with a cowboy whom 
he had run across on a similar errand. There 
were no inhabited houses, if there were houses 
of any kind, for man}'' miles. The two men 
built a fire and ate their supper together. 
Then "to while away the long evening," ]\Ir. 
Roosevelt writes, "I read Hamlet aloud from 
a little pocket Shakespeare. The cowboy, a 
Texan — one of the best riders I have ever seen, 
and also a very intelligent as well as a thor- 
oughly good fellow in every way — was greatly 
interested in it and commented most shrewdly 



64 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

on the parts he liked, especially Polonius's 
advice to Laertes, which he translated into 
homely language with great relish, and ended 
with the just criticism that 'old Shakespeare 
saveyed human natur' some.' " 

In all respects Mr. Roosevelt entered into the 
life about him with a wholesome zest. His 
horses were as good as the best, and his men, 
both those whom he took with him from the 
East and those whom he employed in the West, 
were as loyal to him as it was possible for men 
to be. He washed his own clothes the same as 
the others. He went to the frontier balls and 
danced with the women, opening one cowboy 
ball with the wife of a small stockman, who had 
not long before killed a noted bully of the 
neighbourhood in self-defence, the stockman 
himself dancing opposite. The dance was the 
lancel*s, and jMr. Roosevelt says that the stock- 
man knew all the steps better than he did. 

During his residence in the West he did not 
forget his duties as an orderly citizen of a dis- 
orderly country, in which each man had to de- 



THE WESTERN MAN 65 

fend his own property. The part of the ter- 
ritory in which he was living had been pretty 
well cleared of horse and cattle stealers in the 
earl}^ winter of 1885, but three suspected men 
remained, and as spring approached they be- 
came anxious to leave that part of the coun- 
try, as threats to lynch them had been made. 
The leader of these three was named Finne- 
gan. He usually explained that he was "from 
Bitter Creek, where the further up you went 
the worse people got," and he "lived at the 
fountain head," a description, when you come 
to think of it, not devoid of merit. Finnegan 
and his companions — a German and a half- 
breed — had a hut on the river-bank about 
twenty miles above Roosevelt's ranch, ajid 
Roosevelt knew it. He knew, too, that they 
wished to get away. Therefore, when one of 
his men told him, in March, 1886, that his 
Eastern-built skiff, used in crossing the Little 
IMissouri to the horse range on the other side, 
had been stolen, he at once decided that these 
men were the thieves. The skiff was light and 



66 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

strong and was much more easily handled than 
the flat-bottomed scow which they were known 
to have. 

Mr. Roosevelt decided to deliver the men up to 
justice, if possible, as he believed that to sub- 
mit tamely on this occasion would invite fur- 
ther depredations from lawless characters. 
He therefore had Sewall and Dow, the two 
Maine men whom he had taken with him to the 
West, make a flat-bottomed boat. They com- 
pleted it in three days of rapid work. Then it 
was loaded with provisions enough to last for 
about two weeks, and Mr. Roosevelt, Dow, and 
Sewall embarked in it in pursuit of the thieves. 
They counted on overtaking them in a short 
time, as they knew that Finnegan was aware 
that the Roosevelt skiff* was the only boat be- 
sides his own scow on that part of the river and 
would conclude that he was safe from pursuit. 
It was not practicable to follow the thieves down 
the river on horseback. Finnegan had not 
counted on the building of a new boat, so he 
was taken unawares, when, on the afternoon of 



THE WESTERN MAN 67 

the third day of the pursuit, Roosevelt's 
party, as they turned a bend in the river, saw 
the smoke from a camp fire and not far from 
it, on the river-bank, the stolen boat tied to the 
shore. Then they knew that the thieves could 
not be far away. They fastened their own boat 
to the bank and separated, planning to sur- 
round the camp. When they came near 
enough to see what was going on they dis- 
covered that only one of the three men was 
there, and he was sitting down without his 
weapons. 

Mr. Roosevelt covered him with his gun and 
ordered him to hold up his hands. Then the 
three men rushed in and searched him to make 
sure that he had no pistols in his pockets, and 
to prevent him from giving an alarm to his 
companions. Dow was left in charge of the 
prisoner while Sewall and Mr. Roosevelt went 
some distance to a point from which they com- 
manded all paths to the camp and awaited the 
return of the others. After a time they heard 
voices approaching, and soon Finnegan and his 



G8 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

companion came In sight. They were at once 
covered by the Rooseveljt guns and commanded 
to surrender. As they had no alternative 
worth considering, they obeyed and were 
marched back to the camp. As it was late they 
all remained where they were that night. It 
was bitterly cold, and the problem of guarding 
their prisoners became a difficult one. If their 
feet and arms were bound tightly enough to 
make them helpless the circulation of the blood 
would be stopped and the hands and feet of the 
men would be frozen. As the next best way of 
making the men helpless, their boots were taken 
off and they were compelled to sleep all to- 
gether in one blanket. The country was so 
full of prickly cactus that Mr. Roosevelt 
knew that the men w^ould not attempt to es- 
cape in their stocking feet. As an additional 
precaution, the night was divided into two 
watches, one of the captors sitting up half the 
night and another the other half, while the 
third man had his sleep unbroken. The next 
morning the start was made down the river to 



THE WESTERN MAN 69 

the nearest sheriff and gaol, which they hoped 
to reach in three or four days at the most. 
But their plans were disarranged by the ice in 
the river. For ten days they followed an ice- 
jam down stream, which moved so slowly that 
before they reached the "C Diamond" ranch, 
their provisions were almost exhausted and for 
two or three days they had been living on flour 
and water mixed up together and baked. On 
the outskirts of this ranch they found a hut 
with a solitary cowboy and some bronchos. Mr. 
Roosevelt left his prisoners here while he rode 
to a ranch fifteen miles away, where he was 
told he could get a waggon for carrying them 
safely to the sheriff at Dickinson. After en- 
gaging the waggon, a "prairie schooner," and 
a team of horses, with the ranchman for a 
driver, he returned to the cowboy's hut and his 
prisoners. The next day he walked the pris- 
oners, with Dow and Sewall as assistant 
guards, to the ranchman's house and loaded 
them into the schooner. Then he dismissed 
Sewall and Dow and sent them back up the 



70 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

river with the boats. The start for Dickinson 
and the gaol was made with Mr. Roosevelt on 
foot behind the waggon with his cocked gun 
over his shoulder. He knew that the only way 
to prevent the men from overpowering him 
was to remain out of their reach and to keep 
his gun ready. The trail over the prairie was 
a track of deep mud and progress was slow. 
Night overtook the party at a small hut, where 
they stopped. The prisoners were put into 
the upper bunk, from which it would not be 
easy for them to get out, and Mr. Roosevelt 
mounted guard over them, seated with his back 
against the cabin door all night, fighting 
sleep. It was one armed man against three 
desperadoes and the possible treachery of his 
own physical exhaustion. The one man with the 
gun remained master of the situation and got 
his prisoners into the waggon again all right in 
the morning and followed them into town on 
foot, arriving there about six o'clock in the 
afternoon, completely exhausted after thirty- 
six hours without sleep. He turned them over 



THE WESTERN MAN 71 

to the sheriff with a statement of the charge 
against them. Then, after making up his lost 
sleep, he returned to his ranch, satisfied that he 
had established his reputation for taking care 
of his own property. 

These three prisoners were the last of the 
gang of outlaws the expulsion of whom 
from that part of the country had been be- 
gun some time before the skiff was stolen. A 
meeting of the cattle-men had been held in the 
freight shed at Medora to form an organisa- 
tion for their mutual protection against the 
marauders. It had been openly hinted that a 
certain deputy sheriff was in collusion with the 
outlaws. The deputy was present at the meet- 
ing. 

After the preliminaries of organisation, It Is 
said that Mr. Roosevelt rose In his place and 
addressed the deputy. He openly accused the 
man of dishonesty and incompetency, and ig- 
noring the menace of the officer's revolver, 
the handle of which was projecting above his 
belt, he expressed his scorn of him as a man 



73 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

unworthy and unfit for the office which he 
held. In the history of that part of the coun- 
try such a speech had never been heard be- 
fore. Few men would have had the courage to 
make such an accusation in such a company, 
and many of those present held their breath 
till they saw that the accused man dared not 
retaliate. He sat with downcast head and said 
not a word ; but his prestige was gone forever, 
and it was not long before another deputy suc- 
ceeded him. 

This account of the incident has had wide 
currency, and in the course of my eff'orts to 
verify it, I wrote to Mr. William W. Sewall, 
who was one of the men to assist Mr. Roose- 
velt in arresting Finnegan. He replied: "I 
cannot vouch for the sheriff^ story, as I do not 
remember anj^ such case. Perhaps it has some 
foundation, but has been magnified. Many 
things happened to which we did not attach 
particular importance at the time, and I may 
have forgotten. He [Roosevelt] would have 
done it if he had deemed it necessary. If he 



THE WESTERN MAN 73 

did, we did not deem it very dangerous. Re- 
marks of that kind might have been made. 
We three [Roosevelt, Sewall, and Dow] were 
Eastern men, but we did not intend to be 
bluffed and were not. We were all men of 
peace, but did not intend to let any one stand 
on our toes until they trod the nails off. Mr. 
Roosevelt is not that kind of man and would 
not have had us with him if we had been." 

There were other things in this Western life 
besides taming bullies and defying negligent 
officials. The business there was raising cattle 
and taking care of them on the plains. Mr. 
Roosevelt rode with his cowboys and was as 
good as any of them. On the round-up he 
endured all sorts of hardships with his men, 
riding all day and sleeping on the ground at 
night. On one rainy night he was awakened 
by the report that his cattle were being driven 
before the storm and were in danger of stam- 
peding. Every man rushed to his horse, 
saddled him and rode to the herd, hoping to 
head it off. But the storm raged and the 



74 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

cattle continued to retreat before it, at first 
slowly, but as the thunder grew louder the 
animals began to show terror, and it was not 
long before the men were riding for their life 
in front of the stampeding brutes. A vivid 
flash of lightning revealed an empty corral 
not far away, and Mr. Roosevelt shouted to 
the two men near him to make an opening into 
it, while he tried to guide the cattle around to 
it. By the time two sections of the fence were 
down Roosevelt dashed through on his horse, 
with the maddened animals at his heels, and 
he barely escaped through a narrow opening 
at the other side. The herd was saved with 
the exception of a few animals that were 
trampled to death in the struggle to get 
through the break in the fence. Then the 
ranch-owner and his men rolled themselves in 
their blankets and went to sleep again. 

Mr. Roosevelt not only stood the test when 
it was a question of presence of mind or of 
physical endurance, but also when it was a 
question of public spirit. It was while on a 



THE WESTERN MAN 75 

hunting trip with three other men that he 
fought a fire on a cattle range all one night 
that he might save the grass for his own and 
his neighbours' cattle. He had noticed the 
fire in the morning away to the southward, 
and thought it was too far off to be of concern 
to him ; but in the afternoon he was surprised 
to see it bursting out not more than a mile 
away. After he and his companions had 
vainly striven to turn the course of the 
flames he rode off to seek a way of escape, 
but the fire was moving so rapidly that he 
soon saw that their only way out would be 
cut off before they could reach it. He has- 
tened back to the men and the hunting waggon, 
which he found on the lee of a damp stretch 
of ground, where the men were busily engaged 
in beating down the grass, so that when the 
fire passed around the place it might not eat 
back to where they were. They succeeded in 
saving their belongings, as the fire went 
around them, as they had planned. When the 
wind went down at sunset they killed a stray 



76 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

steer that had been caught for the purpose, 
and spht the carcass open down the centre. 
They dragged one half of this to the fire, 
which was now eating its way slowly along in a 
line not much broader than the length of the 
steer's body. A passageway was beaten 
through the flames to the dry grass on the 
other side and one of the horses forced through 
with a rope attached to one end of the carcass. 
The other end of the carcass was attached to 
another horse, so that the wet and bloody flesh 
might be dragged along the ground, ex- 
tinguishing the flames. Mr. Roosevelt rode 
one of the horses, and one of his men the other, 
while the two remaining men walked behind 
and stamped out what few sparks were left. 
They continued till the flesh was worn off^ the 
bones and the backbone broke. Then they 
got the other half of the carcass and used it 
up the same way, working all night, and then 
stopping only because they were completely 
exhausted. They made a heroic eff*ort, but 
four men and one steer carcass were not 



THE WESTERN MAN 7T 

enough to put out a fire in the rough 
country. 

His knowledge of the West has served him 
well on many occasions. It has enabled him to 
understand the needs of that part of the coun- 
try and to comprehend the minds and purposes 
of its citizens. He is fond of them and grows 
enthusiastic when they call on him. When a 
delegation of Montana men interested in an 
irrigation project were presented to him in 
February, 1906, he said as he entered the room 
where the men were: 

"If the proprieties did not forbid, a whole- 
souled yell from me would be in order in greet- 
ing you. A clean-cut yell is the proper salu- 
tation for you men of Montana. Montana is 
like home to me. I have a warm spot in my 
heart for it. Your irrigation plan concerns 
the Red River District. I have hunted all 
over that district. I will do all I can for 
you." 

Another Montana delegation called on him in 
December of the same year to interest him in 



78 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

a plan for breeding horses on an Indian reser- 
vation. A portfolio of photographs of the 
district was shown to him. 

'*I know that country very well," he re- 
marked as he looked over it. "And those 
horses, I know them pretty well," and a remi- 
niscent smile broke over his features. 

The broad and vigorous West still calls to 
him and his spirit responds. 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 



The thing which impresses one most in con- 
sidering Mr. Roosevelt is that he is a man of 
abounding vitality. As noted in a previous 
chapter, he has confessed that he was a sickly 
boy. He determined to get a strong body as 
an instrument to be directed by his mind, and 
he succeeded. He has developed all his mus- 
cles by rigorous training and has expanded 
his chest till his capacious lungs are qualified 
to feed his blood with oxygen ; and his vigor- 
ous heart sends that rich, vitalised fluid 
through his big neck into his active brain. 
And the result is w^hat has come to be known as 
strenuosity. 

How" this physical vigour displays itself in 
his daily life has been remarked by many ob- 
servers close to him. A notable instance of his 
apparent tirelessness has been described by 



80 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Mr. George Gary Eggleston, who called on 
him at the White House in the spring of 
1902. 

"My personal visit was made on the evening 
of the day on which he returned from his 
comet-like trip in the Carolinas," says Mr. 
Eggleston.* "He had got back to Washing- 
ton in the morning after five days of soul- 
•w^ear3dng travel, still more wearying speech- 
making and function-holding, and the cease- 
less strain of social and every other sort of ex- 
citing experience. Almost any other man 
would have gone to bed and put business 
aside for one day at least. Mr. Roosevelt had 
gone to his desk, instead, to clear off the 
work accumulation of nearly a week. He had 
then held an important Cabinet meeting, re- 
ceived many official and other callers who had 
vexing business matters to discuss, made sev- 
eral appointments to office, and attended to a 
multitude of other trying affairs. Yet, when 
I desired to withdraw on the ground that he 
*New York Herald, April 20, 1902. 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 81 

must be well-nigh exhausted, he cheerily an- 
swered : 

" 'Oh, no, I'm not at all tired. In fact, I 
never feel much of weariness. Light a cigar. 
I want to talk with you about an historical 
point which you criticised some years ago in 
one of my books.' 

"Fortunately I was sitting at the time in a 
well-armed easy-chair," Mr. Eggleston con- 
tinues, "otherwise I think I might have fallen. 
Think of this busy man, ceaselessly engaged 
with strenuous public affairs, still remember- 
ing that poor little criticism of mine, years 
after it was written ! The criticism concerned 
a minute detail of very small consequence in 
any case, yet so earnest and sincere is this 
man, and so 'strenuous' in all that he does, that 
he remembered the point perfectly, and men- 
tioned it now only because he was interested to 
explain to me how he had been led into the 
insignificant little error. It seemed to me 
that in this incident more than one admirable 
quality of the President's mind and char- 



82 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

acter were revealed in a very enlightening 
way." 

An earlier record of the way he employs his 
time was made by a man who accompanied 
him On his tour of the country as a candidate 
for the Vice-Presidency in 1900. It is the 
schedule of a day's occupations, and for vari- 
ety of interest it would be difficult to find it 
equalled in the lives of any other two men. 
Here it is: 

7 A.M. — Breakfast. 
7.30 A.M. — A speech. 

8 A.M. — Reading an historical work. 

9 A.M. — A speech. 

10 A.M. — Dictating letters. 

11 A.M. — Discussing Montana mines. 
11.30 A.M. — A speech. 

12 M. — Reading an ornithological work. 
12.30 P.M. — A speech. 

1 P.M. — Lunch. 

1.30 P.M. — A speech. 

2.30 P.M. — Reading Sir Walter Scott. 

3 P.M. — Answering telegrams. 
3.45 P.M. — A speech. 

4 P.M. — Meeting the press. 
4.30 P.M. — Reading. 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 83 

5 P.M. — A speech. 

6 P.M. — Reading. 

7 P.M. — Supper. 

8 to 10 P.M. — Speaking. 

11 P.M. — Reading alone in his car. 

12 P.M.— To bed. 

He was practising then what he has always 
preached. One version of his gospel of life 
has been given by Major W. H. H. Llewellyn, 
of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who commanded 
a company in the regiment of Rough Riders. 
The Major said one day after his old com- 
mander had become President : 

"The Colonel [he will always be Colonel to 
the Rough Riders] \('as talking the other day 
with one of his old boys who has come out 
into our country to do business, and he said 
to him: 

" 'Get action ; do things ; be sane ; don't frit- 
ter away your time ; create, act, take a place 
wherever you are and be Somebody; get ac- 
tion.' 

"That's the Colonel all over," continued the 
Major. "It's the story of his own life. It's 



84 THE MANY-SIDP:D ROOSEVELT 

the advice he gave us all when we parted with 
him at Montauk Point. Do you remember 
that evening in the camp when the regiment 
stood in front of him, and the parting came? 
I can hear him say now as he did then : 

" 'Remember when you go out into the world 
to-morrow, for nine days you will be regarded 
as heroes, and then you will have to take your 
places as ordinary citizens. You will be 
judged then for what you are, what you do 
as men, not as to what you have been. Don't 
get gay.' " 

The Major paused a moment, and then con- 
cluded, reflectively: "I've seen young fellows 
in our clubs sit three hours discussing the 
character of the cork in a polo pony's hoof. 
That kind of action the Colonel hates." 

Mr. Roosevelt is happy where things are hap- 
pening. He remarked once that he liked 
to be where something was going on, and that 
he: generally managed to make something 
happen where he was. Danger arouses in him 
a keen sense of enjoyment, as was illustrated 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 85 

in a small way in Victor, Colorado, during the 
campaign of 1900. A mob tried to prevent 
him from speaking there. One man hit him 
in the breast with a piece of scantling six 
feet long from which an insulting banner had 
been torn. Another man tried to strike him 
in the face, but was prevented by a miner. The 
same observer who recorded the routine of a 
day's work on the tour said afterward : 

"When the storm of the mob swept up to 
him I stood on the lower step of the Pullman 
sleeper with George W. Ogden. Ogden ex- 
claimed : 

"'Seethe Colonel's facel' 

"I looked. Rocks were flying over him and 
the scantling waved savagely. And he ? He 
was smiling and his eyes were dancing; and 
he was coming ahead to safety as composedly 
as though he were approaching the entrance 
to his own home among friends." 

When it was all over he exclaimed enthusias- 
tically : 

"This is magnificent. Why, it's the best time 



86 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

I've had since I started. I wouldn't have 
missed it for anjiihing." 

He seems to en j oy everything in the same en- 
thusiastic way. His comment after he was 
defeated for the mayoralty of New York by 
Abram S. Hewitt was characteristic: 
"Well, I've had a bully time, anyway." 
His interest in athletics has continued since 
he left college, as those realise w^ho have at- 
tempted to keep up with him on his rides or 
walks about Washington. He is an expert 
boxer and fencer ; he sits a horse as if he were 
part of the animal ; and he has made practical 
investigations into the mysteries of jiu jitsu, 
the Japanese art of self-defence. In his youth 
he played football, and when he received the 
team of the Carlisle Indian School at the White 
House on the morning after the Thanksgiving 
Day game in 1902, he proved that his interest 
in the sport still survived. He had read the ac- 
count of the game in the morning papers and 
was full of it all day, talking football at the 
Cabinet meeting and with nearly every one he 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 8T 

saw. When Mr. W. G. Thompson, who had 
charge of the Indians, introduced them to him, 
he knew all about them. Johnson, the captain, 
was presented first. 

"Delighted," exclaimed the President, grasp- 
ing his hand. "You play quarter back. The 
mass play of your team was splendid, I am 
delighted." 

Parker came next and was greeted in a simi- 
lar way, according to the account of the 
Washington correspondents. 

"Your play was brilliant. You made three 
touchdowns, didn't you ? How in the world did 
you do it?" 

And so it went along the line. The President 
talked football with every man in the party. 
Sometimes he would call back one of them to 
discuss a point in the game. Nearly every 
man was asked to what tribe he belonged. 
One said he was a Kaw. 

"Yes, Congressman Curtis belongs to that 
tribe," the President remarked. "I'm glad to 
meet a fellow-tribesman of his." 



88 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"You're a football player, that's self-evi- 
dent," he remarked as he looked at one of the 
boys who had been bruised in the game. To 
another battered pla^^er he said, "I see with- 
out asking that you played yesterday, and it 
didn't improve your beauty." 

The stolid Indian smiled cheerfully at this 
and passed on. 

Mr. Roosevelt made every one of them feel at 
his ease. He knew the big chiefs in some of 
the tribes represented, and when he mentioned 
their names the players addressed were greatly 
pleased. Most of the Indians have adopted 
the names of white men, and the President 
asked these what they were called by their 
own people. 

"No need to ask you, Mr. Tomahawk," said 
he, beaming on the right guard. "I know 
what yours means." 

There was one player whose Indian name 
was Bear. When the word was spoken the 
President cried: 

"Delighted," and grasped the boy's hand 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 89 

warmly. "I'm well acquainted with the bear 
family. I met some of them in Mississippi, 
and I know Baer of the Reading Coal Com- 
pany. He is harder to catch than any of 
them. You are built like a football player. 
I'm glad you are not one of the bears I chased 
in Mississippi. They would make good foot- 
ball pla^^ers, too." 

At the end of the line was the only player 
who was not an Indian. He was Exendine, a 
full-blooded Eskimo. When Mr. Thompson 
presented him, the President reached out and 
crushed the youth's chubby hand in his own 
and said : 

"Delighted to meet you. I congratulate you 
on coming to this countr}'^ to get an education. 
So you are an Eskimo .^^ I don't suppose the 
coal famine worries you a bit." 

He was unfeignedly interested in these young 
men, not only because they were Indians, but 
because they were developing vigorous bodies. 
Virility always appeals to him. Way back in 
1890, or earlier, he was preaching it in so 



90 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

original a way that Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who 
was visiting this country at the time, remem- 
bered him and his gospel through the interven- 
ing years till he became President. Mr. 
O'Connor said in September, 1901 : 

"I never had the pleasure of being introduced 
to President Roosevelt, but I had an oppor- 
tunity of studying him pretty closely through 
an evening in New York. There were three 
papers read by three different speakers. One 
was by a wild man — I forget his name — who 
was preaching a Know-nothing crusade 
against Germans, Italians, and Irish immi- 
grants ; the other was by St. Clair McKelwa}^, 
the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle; and the 
third was by !Mr. Roosevelt. 

"Though it is eleven years ago, I have a very 
distinct impression of the speeches. The one 
in particular which impressed me was, curi- 
ously enough, not that of the present Presi- 
dent, but that of the editor. I never heard a 
wittier, a more sensible or more pulverising 
speech than that of St. Clair McKelway. 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 91 

With perfectly equable temper, showing no 
passion and no indignation, though he felt 
both, Mr. McKelway got rid of the frothy 
fulminations of the Know-nothing orator un- 
der a cannonade of chaff mingled with sense, 
so that you really felt pity as you saw the 
remains of the narrow-browed and blatant 
fanatic strewn on the floor. The one man 
who could have made such a speech in my 
experience is Sir William Harcourt ; and 
I am not sure that even he could have 
made it. 

"That is, perhaps, the reason why my recol- 
lection of Mr. Roosevelt is not so clear as it 
might be. To tell the truth, he was eclipsed 
by the journalist. But still, I do remem- 
ber the speech; still more do I remember the 
man. One sentence was characteristic of the 
one and the other; and I think I can recall it 
verbatim. Mr. Roosevelt was speaking of the 
undesirable element from the point of view 
of the population of New York, and he signal- 
ised for eminence among these the four hun- 



92 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

fired and the politicians. And then, amid the 
titters of a well-dressed and self-restrained 
audience, Mr, Roosevelt proceeded to declare 
that he thought the politicians much less un- 
desirable than the four hundred. 'They are 
more vicious,' said Mr. Roosevelt, 'but they 
are more virile.' 

"It is curious that I should remember that 
sentence now; and perhaps it is lucky, for it 
gives the key to the whole philosophy of the 
man who so suddenly and so tragically has 
been called to the greatest of human posi- 
tions." 

It certainly is a novel doctrine that mere ani- 
mal vigour is a good thing in itself, as well 
as for the potentialities that lie in it. If it 
were preached more there would be fewer dys- 
peptics and fewer hypochondriacs and fewer 
men with brains awry because they receive too 
little nourishment from the body. If Hamlet 
had taken more out-door exercise he would 
have married Ophelia, led a revolution 
against his uncle and sat on the throne of 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 93 

Denmark himself instead of mooning about 
the possibilities in a bare bodkin. 

Mr. Roosevelt's own virility has kept his 
nerves steady, so that he does not succumb to 
phj^sical suffering, as appeared at the time of 
the accident in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on 
September S, 1902, when the carriage in 
which he was riding was demolished by an 
electric car, its occupants thrown out, and 
Craig, the special Secret Service officer trav- 
elling with him, killed. Dr. Lung, who reached 
the President first, found him on his knees, 
raising himself uncertainly from the grass, 
thirty feet from the smashed carriage. The 
doctor threw his arms about him and lifted 
him to his feet. 

"Where do you feel pain.^" the doctor asked, 
at the same time patting the President's sides 
gently, searching for broken ribs. 

The President broke away from him 
roughly. 

"I'm all right," he said. "Some of the others 
are badly hurt ; look after them." 



94 THE xMANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Mr. Roosevelt's jaw was set in an expression 
that no man who has seen it ever forgets. He 
felt a sense of outrage at this sort of treatment 
for himself and his friends. He dived into 
the crowd of those who had run up from the 
Country Club, for which he had originally 
started, and sought out the motorman, who was 
standing behind his car looking stupidly at 
the mangled body of Craig. The eight wheels 
of the car had passed over him. The Presi- 
dent strode up to the motorman with his fist 
doubled and shook it under his nose. 

"If your car got out of control," he said with 
his voice shaking, "if it got away from you, 
why, then, that is one thing. But if it is any- 
thing else, this is a damnable outrage!" 

Then suddenly checking himself he dropped 
on one knee beside Craig's mangled body. 

"Too bad, too bad," he said. "Poor Craig ! 
How my children will feel!" Craig was the 
hero of the Roosevelt children. 

The President's face was badly bruised in 
this accident, and the bone of one of his legs 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 95 

SO seriously injured that two operations had to 
be performed on it later — one in Indianapolis 
and one in Washington — and he had to cut 
short a Western trip on account of it. But 
he did not think of himself. His physicians 
had to do that for him. 

The nature and extent of the injury to his 
leg are best indicated by the official bulletins 
issued concerning them. Before the President 
was taken to the hospital in Indianapolis Mr. 
George B. Cortelyou, then Secretary to the 
President, gave out this statement : 

As a result of the trolley accident at Pitts- 
field, Massachusetts, the President received 
several severe bruises. One of these, on the left 
leg between the knee and the ankle, has devel- 
oped a small abscess. The President is entirely 
well otherwise and has continued to meet the 
several engagements of his itinerary, but in 
view of the continuance of the abscess, and out 
of an abundance of caution, Drs. Oliver and 
Cook, of Indianapolis, were requested to meet 
Dr. Lung, the President's surgeon, at Indian- 
apolis, Dr. Richardson, of Washington, D. C, 
being also of the number. In the opinion of 



96 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the doctors the trouble necessitates an opera- 
tion, which they think should be performed 
at once at St. Vincent's Hospital, in this city. 
As after the operation the President will re- 
quire entire rest, probably for at least ten days 
or two weeks, it has been necessary to cancel 
all the remaining engagements of this trip, 
and he will go directly from Indianapolis to 
Washington this evening. The physicians 
say that the case is not in any way serious and 
that there is no danger whatever. This state- 
ment is made so that no false rumours may 
disturb the people and that they may be au- 
thoritatively advised of the exact nature of the 
case. 

At the conclusion of the operation the physi- 
cians authorised the following statement : 

As a result of the traumatism (bruise) received 
in the trolley accident at Pittsfield, Massa- 
chusetts, there was found to be a circumscribed 
collection of perfectly pure serum in the 
middle third of the left anterior tibial 
region, the sac containing about two ounces, 
which was removed. The indications are that 
the President should make speedy recovery. 
It is absolutely imperative, however, that he 
should remain quiet and refrain from using 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 97 

the leg. The trouble is not serious, but tem- 
porarily disabling. 

The injury did not heal as rapidly as was 
desired, and on September 28th another bul- 
letin was issued, describing what had been 
done to bring relief. Here it is: 

Dr. Newton M. ShafFer, of New York, 
joined the President's physicians in consulta- 
tion this morning at ten o'clock. The increase 
in local symptoms and a rise in temperature 
rendered it necessary to make an incision into 
a small cavity, exposing the bone, which was 
found to be slightly affected. Thorough 
drainage is now established and the physicians 
feel confident that recovery will be uninter- 
rupted. The operation was performed by 
Surgeon-General Rixey, assisted by Dr. Lung, 
and in consultation with Surgeon-General 
O'Reilly and Doctors Shaffer, Urdo, and Stitt. 

The next day, to put at rest various alarm- 
ing rumours about the President's condition, 
the following official statement was made: 

The condition of the wound is satisfactory. 
The temperature this morning is normal. The 



98 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

patient slept well and at present is occupying 
a rolling chair. He is cheerful and from the 
beginning has shown neither impatience nor 
restlessness, but has carried out the directions 
of the physicians with scrupulous care. Since 
the use of the aspirating needle to evacuate 
the sac on the 22d instant, which left no 
wound, there has been no operation until 
yesterday. 

(Signed) George B. Cortelyou, 

Secretary to the President. 
11 A.M., September 29, 1902. 

The blow must have been painful, indeed, 
when it was received, to cause such grave re- 
sults ; but the President made light of it at 
the time. At the places where he was to speak 
after he left Pittsfield he explained that owing 
to the killing of his faithful friend, Craig, he 
could not talk on public topics ; and later in 
the day, in referring to his own injuries, he 
said: 

"In my salad days I have received many 
worse injuries at football, polo, and other 
games, and I would have been ashamed to ac- 
knowledge that I felt hurt. If it were not for 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 99 

the death of poor Craig, I wouldn't care a 
snap of my finger for what has happened." 

He might have referred to his stoicism when 
his bones were broken and not merely bruised, 
if he had thought fit. For he astonished his 
friends then, as he had done later with his 
apparent indifference at Pittsfield. It hap- 
pened not long after he had built his house on 
S:.gamore Hill, Oyster Bay. He gave a hunt 
breakfast to the Meadowbrook Hunt Club, 
and after it was over set out with his fellow- 
huntsmen for a ten-mile "drag." 

Less than an hour later a friend who was in- 
specting the new stables saw Mr. Roosevelt 
ride up. He noticed that his host had liberal 
quantities of court-plaster on his face, that he 
showed some blood, that he had his right hand 
tucked between two buttons of his waistcoat, 
and that when he dismounted he did so cau- 
tiously. 

The friend began to think that he had had a 
bad fall, but Mr. Roosevelt was so cool and 
played so unconcernedly with one of his 

LOfC 



100 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

children that was being wheeled by the nurse 
near the stables that the man decided that 
he was only scratched. And that was what 
he himself said when asked about the 
matter. 

"Only a scratch — just a little scratch." 

In a few minutes Mr. Roosevelt went into the 
house and his guest dismissed the incident from 
his mind. A quarter of an hour later the man 
was standing in front of the house when a 
horse, covered with lather, tore up the drive- 
way. Its rider, a well-known Long Island doc- 
tor, pulled up at the steps and inquired: 

"How's Mr. Roosevelt.? Has he come 
home .?" 

"What's the matter, doctor.?" the guest 
asked. "Yes, he is home, but as far as I can 
see he has only got about a yard of court-plas- 
ter on his face. He can't be hurt very much, 
for he has been playing with his baby since he 
came back." 

The doctor looked astonished, and exclaimed 
as he hurried into the house: 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 101 

"Why, man, he broke his arm when his horse 
went down!" 

A few days later the same friend met Mr. 
Roosevelt with his arm in a sling on Fifth 
Avenue in New York. 

"•'Sorry you didn't tell me the other day that 
your arm was broken," he said. "Perhaps I 
could have helped you." 

"Pooh ! Pooh !" Mr. Roosevelt replied. "It 
was merely a scratch," and turned the con- 
versation. 

Mr. Roosevelt has referred to this accident in 
an essay on "Hunting with Hounds," in the 
course of which he says : 

Before there had been a chance for much tail- 
ing, we came to a five-bar gate, out of a road 
— a jump of just four feet five inches from 
the take-off. Up to this, of course, we went 
one at a time, at a trot or hand-gallop, and 
twenty-five horses cleared it in succession with- 
out a single refusal and with but one mistake. 
Owing to the severity of the pace, combined 
wdth the average height of the timber 
(although no one fence was of phenomenally 
noteworthy proportions), a good many falls 



102 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

took place, resulting in an unusually large 
percentage of accidents. The master partly 
dislocated one knee, another man broke two 
ribs, and another — the present writer — broke 
his arm. However, almost all of us managed 
to struggle through to the end in time to see 
the death. On this occasion I owed my broken 
arm to the fact that my horse, a solemn animal 
originally taken out of a buggy, though a 
very clever fencer, was too coarse to gallop 
alongside the blooded beasts against which he 
was pitted. But he was so easy in his gaits, 
and so quiet, being ridden wdth only a snaffle, 
that there was no difficulty in following to the 
end of the run. 

On another occasion, while on a hunting trip 
in the West, he was thrown from a bucking 
horse at the beginning of a day's jaunt and 
his thumb was put out of joint. He pulled 
the dislocated member back into position and 
remounted and rode off, making no further 
reference in his account of the trip to what 
was an extremely painful injury. 

Mr. Roosevelt now takes more physical ex- 
ercise than any other man in Washington. He 
outwalks his friends and outrides them, too. 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 103 

One of Ills favourite amusements is riding, and 
he likes to get a friend to go with him. He 
sits close to his horse in the Western style and 
makes fun of his acquaintances who have 
adopted the English fashion of riding. When 
Prince Henry of Prussia visited Washington 
the President took him riding through the 
country roads about the capital in a driving 
rain-storm. Most of the party turned back 
when the rain became heavy, but the Prince 
and the President kept on, each seeming to 
enjoy the battle with the elements. Indeed, he 
seems to delight in testing the willingness of 
his friends to expose themselves to the weather. 
Not long after Mr. Robert Bacon, his class- 
mate in Harvard, was made First Assistant 
Secretary of State, Mr. Roosevelt initiated 
him into the strenuosities of life in Washing- 
ton under the present administration. He in- 
vited Mr. GifFord Pinchot, of the Forestry Bu- 
reau, and Mr. Bacon to take a walk with him 
one afternoon at the close of a busy and tiring 
day. It was raining hard and he advised them 



104 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

to put on old clothes. Instead of following 
the advice, they arrived at the White House 
dressed as usual. Mr. Roosevelt met them in 
a badly worn suit with a slouch hat and heavy 
shoes. 

The three started out in the rain. Their 
walk took them to the open country, where 
they came to a considerable body of water. 
They wished to cross to the other side, but 
there was no bridge within a mile. The 
President told Mr. Bacon that he could go 
to the bridge and cross and meet them on 
the other side, as he and Mr. Pinchot would 
wade over. Mr. Bacon objected and declared 
that if the others waded he would too. 

"Bully," shouted the President. "Come on, 
then !" and he plunged into the water, that 
proved to be so much deeper than he antici- 
pated that he had to swim for some distance, 
Bacon and Pinchot following after. 

A few weeks before this, while the President 
was still at his Long Island home, he boarded 
the submarine boat Plunger, which was in the 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 105 

harbour at Oyster Bay, and spent nearly an 
hour under water. He desired to learn for 
himself how the submarines behaved when in 
service. The day was stormy, the rain falling 
in sheets, and the wind kicked up a choppy sea. 
The boat was put through various manoBUvres 
by Lieutenant Nelson, who was in command. 
He dived to the bottom, came to the surface 
for a few seconds and went down again ; he 
remained stationary under water with the 
lights out, turned the boat around, let it come 
to the surface stern foremost, and did every- 
thing that a submarine can do. The Presi- 
dent himself took the wheel in the conning 
tower and with the assistance of Lieutenant 
Nelson operated the boat, making it rise to 
the surface and descend. Finally he fired a 
blank torpedo with his own hand. 

His abounding physical vitality has kept him 
youthful in more ways than one. It even 
affects his personal tastes, as he once confessed 
to Senator Beveridge and Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat. 
These gentlemen were waiting for him in the 



106 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

large room adjoining the executive office when 
the door suddenly burst open and the Presi- 
dent, in his riding clothes, hurried into the 
Cabinet room. Both of the visitors began 
laughing simultaneously^ 

"Well, what are you laughing at?" asked 
Mr. Roosevelt as he shook hands gaily with 
them. 

"We want to congratulate you," said one of 
them. 

"On what.?" 

"Why, on the necktie." 

Then the President joined heartily in the 
laughter at his own expense. The necktie 
would have attracted attention anywhere. It 
was a four-in-hand of silk with three bright 
coloured stripes of red, green, and yellow. 
Each colour stood out distinctly from the 
others, and the tie was of such generous pro- 
portions that it spread over a large expanse 
of shirt-front which showed above a rather 
low-cut vest. 

The President defended his taste in selectincc 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 107 

the tie, and then with a twinkle in his eye he 
remarked : 

"Well, you know, I have a very youthful 
side." 

He certainly has no more hesitation than a 
healthy boy in doing things that appeal to 
him. This has made it easy for him when hunt- 
ing to take game into camp, when less adven- 
turous hunters would have been unwilling, if 
not unable, to do what he has done. While at 
the Keystone Ranch in Colorado, for instance, 
on a hunting trip, he and his guide held at 
bay a large lion in a crevice on the precipi- 
tous side of a rock ledge which extended from 
the point of the crevice sheer down fifty feet. 
Mr. Roosevelt shot at the lion, and the beast 
disappeared under a perpendicular wall of 
rock. A large slab of stone projected over the 
rim of the ledge, and if one of the men could 
hang head first over this slab he could see the 
lion and might be able to shoot it. 

"The question which confronted us," said the 
guide in telling of the incident, "was how to 



108 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

hang over the rock. Finally Colonel Roosevelt 
looked at me intently and said, 'Goff , we must 
have that lion if he is there. I'll tell you what 
I'll do. I will take my gun and crawl over 
that rock. You hold me by the feet and let 
me slide down far enough to see him. If I 
can see him I will get him.' This plan was 
carried out, and he killed the lion, hanging 
head downward, while I held him by the 
feet." 

But of all the pictures of Mr. Roosevelt, 
either verbal or photographic, the one which 
gives the best and most vivid impression of the 
vigorous human animal rejoicing in his vital- 
ity is that one which shows him mounted on a 
hunter taking a fence. Horse and rider are 
instinct with life, and while you look at them 
they seem to leap out of the paper and dash 
down the road with the drum-beat of the 
hoofs ringing in your ears as they disappear 
from view. 

Mr. John Morley's characterisation of him, 
after spending a day or so at the White 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 109 

House, puts in words what the photograph 
represents. 

"I have seen two tremendous works of na- 
ture," the British statesman said; "one is 
Niagara Falls, and the other is the President 
of the United States." 

That he does not dislike to be represented as 
a man of vigour was made evident in the sum- 
mer of 1905, when an equestrian statuette 
of himself as a Rough Rider by Frederick 
MacMonnies was presented to him. The horse 
on which the figure is mounted is leaping into 
the air as though going over a five-barred 
gate. It is supported in this position by a 
shield bearing the inscription, "Vi Virtute 
Vir," which may be loosely translated, "Vigor- 
ous, virtuous, and virile." 

"I now feel myself a really great man," he 
said laughingly when the statuette was given 
to him by Miss Janet Scudder, a pupil of 
MacMonnies, in the presence of Mrs. Roose- 
velt, Admiral and Mrs. Dewey, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Charles J. Bonaparte. "The distinction 



110 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

of 'being done' by either St. Gaudens or Mac- 
Monnies might flatter anybody. I had al- 
ways hoped to have something in my posses- 
sion b}^ MacMonnies, but it never occurred to 
me that I should have something by MacMon- 
nies of me. The statuette is exactly as I 
should like to have it — the cavalry horse, the 
Rough Rider clothes, and the emblematic sup- 
port to the whole." 

The office of the Presidency makes severe de- 
mands upon the strength of its occupants. 
Most of them have had little time or energy 
left for anything else. There are few things, 
however, in which Theodore Roosevelt does not 
interest himself. He might well use for his 
motto the famous saying of Terence, "Homo 
sum — humani nihil a me alienum puto" — 
I am a man interested in all that concerns my 
fellow-men. It is necessary to review his extra- 
Presidential activities for only a few months 
to discover how far his sympathies extend. 

In the summer of 1905 he travelled from his 
home at Oyster Bay to Coney Island, on New 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 111 

York Bay, for the sole purpose of visiting a 
hospital for the treatment of children of the 
poor suffering from tuberculosis of the bones. 
When he saw what benefit the children derived 
from the sea air he made an appeal to the pub- 
lic for the support of the institution. Some 
months later he took time to write to the 
president of the National Mothers' Congress : 

I believe so heartily in the Congress of 
Mothers that I will break through my rule of 
not writing such letters to wish you all possible 
success in your Mothers' Congress of Georgia, 
which is your native State and was the native 
State of my own mother. 

This solicitude for the coming generation, 
this care that there shall be men and women 
in sympathy with American ideals, extends 
to the development of the physical bodies of 
the children. In August, 1905, he accepted 
the honorary vice-presidency of the Public 
Schools Athletic League, organised to secure 
systematic athletic drill for the boys. In a let- 
ter addressed to General George W. Wingate, 



112 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the president of the League, he said the 
organisation "is performing a service of the 
utmost importance, not merely from the 
standpoint of the physical, but also from the 
standpoint of the ethical needs of these school- 
children." He wrote further : "I am also par- 
ticularly pleased that you are about to organ- 
ise a woman's auxiliary branch, for the girls 
need exercise quite as much as the boys." 

From athletics in the schools in August his 
attention was transferred in the autumn to 
football in the colleges. In October he invited 
representatives of the athletic interests of 
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities to 
meet him at the White House to consider re- 
forming the abuses in the game, and in No- 
vember he had Dr. J. W. White of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania as his guest when he 
discussed the same subject. Dr. White re- 
ported, after his conference, that the Presi- 
dent had clear and positive views on the kind 
of reforms needed. They included the aboli- 
tion of brutality and foul play, with such 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 113 

power given to the umpire as would permit 
him to order from the field not only individual 
players, but whole teams when detected in bru- 
tality or in violation of the rules of fairness ; 
and he urged that the responsible heads of 
colleges whose teams play together should 
have a "gentleman's agreement" to secure the 
enforcement of the spirit as well as the letter 
of the rules intended to make an honourable 
defeat more glorious than an unfairly won 
victory. 

The complete history of the President's in- 
tervention in the war between Russia and Ja- 
pan has not yet been written ; but whether he 
intervened on his own initiative, or whether he 
acted on the suggestion of some one else, he 
had the time and the strength in the summer 
of 1905, as well as the disposition, to attempt 
to bring two warring nations together. The 
Peace of Portsmouth was properly the Peace 
of Theodore Roosevelt — not Roosevelt the 
American President, but Roosevelt the citizen 
of the world, seeking to prevent unnecessary 



114 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

bloodshed and using the prestige of the high 
office which he temporarily holds to bring to 
pass the results which the man desires. 

From making peace he turned his attention 
to encouraging Irish industries, for he wrote 
to the managers of an Irish industrial fair ex- 
pressing deep interest in the whole exhibition, 
but particularl}^ in that part of it which was 
intended to interpret the Irish revival, or the 
revival of the study of the ancient Celtic 
language. A few weeks later he sent a signed 
photograph of himself to the Manhattan 
Chess Club, to go to the winner in the cable 
chess match between that club and the Berliner 
Chess Society. In December he sent a mes- 
sage of appreciation and congratulation to 
be read at the dinner in honour of the seven- 
tieth anniversary of the birth of Mark Twain, 
and in the same month he had as his guest in 
Washington Herr Engelbert Humperdinck, 
the composer of "Hansel and Gretel," with 
whom he discussed music and German litera- 
ture. And at about this time he was interest- 



THE STRENUOUS MAN 115 

ing himself in securing for the National Art 
Gallery the superb collection of paintings by 
Whistler owned by Mr. Charles L. Freer, of 
Detroit. 

When Mr. Walter Wellman sailed from NeAV 
York in the spring of 1906 to arrange for an 
attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, 
Mr. Roosevelt sent to him a telegram of good 
wishes ; and when the Americans won a vic- 
tory at the Olympic games in Greece, he tele- 
graphed to the manager of the team : 

Hearty congratulations to you and the 
American contestants. Uncle Sam is all right. 

At his suggestion, a race between Ameri- 
can and German yachts was arranged for 
the early autumn of 1906, and after the 
race he presented the prize, a cup called after 
him, to Commodore Trenor L. Park, owner 
of the Vim, the successful boat. His activities 
have extended even to an attempt to reform the 
spelling of the English language. 



VI 

THE HUMAN MAN 



Speculate as men will about the purpose of 
life, and strain as they may on the cords which 
bind them to the elemental facts, one truth 
remains. The organisation of society is based 
on the sanctity of the family, on the anticipa- 
tion of offspring, and on the importance of 
safeguarding the future for the benefit of 
those that shall come after. Practically all 
our progress has come because men have 
sought to improve the conditions of life for 
+«heir children. This desire has built railways, 
has equipped factories, has painted pictures, 
has erected splendid buildings, to say nothing 
of endowing colleges and founding scholar- 
ships for the immediate benefit of the younger 
generation. 

'J he child with the morning in his face is the 
motive of the man and the woman, and in a 



THE HUMAN MAN 117 

very real sense the babe is leading the world. 
There is a divine allegory in the singing of 
the angels in celebration of the Advent of the 
Child in Bethlehem, as well as in the pilgrim- 
age of the Wise Men to do homage with pre- 
cious gifts before the cradle of the New Born. 
Whatever else it was, the Great Miracle put 
the divine seal upon the lesser miracle of the 
advent of the humblest child with its guaran- 
tee of racial continuity. 

In these da3^s of the restless woman, seeking 
out her mission in the world, Mr. Roosevelt's 
glorification of fatherhood and motherhood 
attracts attention, because in some circles it 
has been assumed that human ingenuity could 
devise a better occupation for women than 
training their children into unselfish and help- 
ful men and women ready to take up the work 
of the world where their elders leave it. This 
is only one of many instances of his grasp of 
the elemental virtues and of his courage in 
urging the importance of what men sometimes 
overlook because it is so common. He is not 



118 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

ashamed to show his fondness for chil- 
dren, and is touched when they respond. 
Mr. Eggleston, whose wonder at his tire- 
lessness we have seen expressed, says in 
further description of what happened during 
his call: 

"There was a glisten as of tears in his eyes 
w^hen I told him the other evening that a stal- 
wart boy had recently said to me : 

" 'Anyhow, Mr. Roosevelt always stands for 
us boys when we want to do things.' 

"I had seen him receive a boy a few days be- 
fore," Mr. Eggleston continues. "The boy, 
a fine lad with a head that meant something, 
had come with his father to be 'presented.' 
The father was received cordially. The boy 
was almost embraced. The President took him 
by the shoulders in caressing fashion and 
talked with him as any good-natured senior in 
a school might do with a new scholar who 
pleased his fancy. The boy had looked 
abashed and terrified before his presentation. 
When it was over he seemed to me to be the 



THE HUMAN MAN 119 

happiest boy in the world — with the excep- 
tion, perhaps, of Mr. Roosevelt." 

Two little girls were going to Oyster Bay to 
visit their grandmother for a second time while 
Mr. Roosevelt was at his home there in the 
summer of 1903. When asked if they had seen 
the President, one of them responded : 

"Of course I have. He goes by our house 
almost every day. He always waves his hand 
and takes off his hat to me." 

"To you !" exclaimed the other child. "He 
takes off his hat to all of us." 

"Well, he may do that, but he smiles at me. 
I know he does, because we are acquainted. 
I was on the fence one day, alone, and he went 
by on horseback. He leaned over and said, 
'How do you do, little girl? What is your 
name?' 'Ethel, sir,' I said. And after that 
he always smiles at me, because he knows 
me." 

One day he was sitting in his library there, 
talking over public affairs with a friend, when 
a lot of boys entered the room. 



130 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"Uncle Teddy," said one, respectfully, "it's 
after four." 

"So it is," responded Mr. Roosevelt, looking 
at the clock. "Why didn't you call me sooner .f^ 
One of you boys get my rifle." 

Then he turned to his guest and added, "I 
must ask you to excuse me. We'll talk this 
out some other time. I promised the boys I'd 
go shooting with them after four o'clock, 
and I never keep boys waiting. It's a hard 
trial for a boy to wait." 

Then he walked off down the lawn with a 
crowd of boys surrounding him, all talking at 
the same time and appealing constantly to 
"Uncle Teddy." 

A wholesome woman who had called to see 
him in Washington in connection with public 
business, said, as she was leaving, that his con- 
ception of family life was beautiful, and added 
that she thought his children must be a great 
pleasure to him. 

"Pleasure !" he said with a smile ; "you would 
be surprised and perhaps shocked if you could 



THE HUMAN MAN 121 

see the President of the United States engaged 
in a pillow fight with his children. But those 
fights are the joy of my life." 

During the special session of Congress in 
November, 1903, it became necessary to ap- 
point a Federal Judge in one of the Western 
States. The President believes that it is right 
to consult the Congressmen from the State 
in which an appointment is to be made. The 
Congressmen from this State had not been 
able to agrpe on a man for the vacancy. 
The supporters of one candidate had charged 
that the candidate of another group was 
guilty, among other things, of playing poker 
with many lawyers and winning their money. 
It was said that such a man could not be 
trusted to make an impartial judge when 
these lawyers were practising before him. 
The President, however, would not rule this 
man from consideration just then, and in- 
sisted that the Congressmen should agree 
among themselves. 

One afternoon, while they were in caucus 



123 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

together, one of the RepubHcan leaders of the 
State went to the White House and talked to 
the President about the case. In the course of 
the interview he told Mr. Roosevelt how dis- 
tressed the candidate's family was over the 
charges against him, and exhibited a letter 
which the man, who was in Washington look- 
ing after his own interests, had received from 
his young daughter at home. The letter read : 

Dear Papa : Why don't you go to the Presi- 
dent and tell him about it.? If he sees your 
face he will never believe those nasty charges. 

Mr. Roosevelt took a rose from among the 
flowers on his table and handed it to his caller. 

"I wish," said he, "that you would send that 
flower to that daughter and tell her I like a 
young girl who has that kind of faith in her 
father." 

At this moment a messenger from the De- 
partment of Justice came in and presented a 
paper to the President. It was a note from 
Attorney-General Knox, stating that at the 



THE HUMAN MAN 123 

President's command he had investigated the 
charges against the man and found them un- 
true. The President showed the note to the 
State leader and then, sitting down, wTote out 
the candidate's nomination and sent it at once 
to the Senate. 

The combination of a loyal daughter de- 
fending her father against unjust charges 
made an appeal not to be resisted. On an- 
other occasion executive action was prompted 
by an appeal to prevent the separation of the 
members of an immigrant family. This was 
in the case of two Syrian children whose 
father came to this country in 1902. He left 
his wife and family behind, planning to send 
for them later. He settled in Worcester, 
Massachusetts, and declared his intention of 
becoming a citizen. Within a year he had 
saved money enough to bring his family to the 
United States. They sold their small belong- 
ings in Turkey and started for America. 
When they arrived in New York they were 
met by the husband and father, and the family 



124 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

reunion was joyous. They were all to live to- 
gether in the land of freedom and could hardly 
wait till the inspection officers had admitted 
them. 

Then came the tragedy. The children could 
not pass the medical examination. While on 
board they had contracted some disease of the 
eyelids, said to be contagious, and they must 
go back on the steamer which brought them. 
The mother might remain here. Indeed, she 
Avould have to, as there was not money enough 
left to pay her way back to her own country. 
And if she went back she would have no place 
to which to go. There are many such trage- 
dies at the immigration office. The inspectors 
are used to them and their indifference made 
the thing seem harder to bear. 

"Is it nothing to you that I have spent my all 
to bring my family here, where there is oppor- 
tunity for everj'^ man, and now find that for 
reasons beyond our control my innocent young 
children must be torn from their mother?" is 
what the man said, in effect, wondering at the 



THE HUMAN MAN 125 

heartlessness of the letter of the regula- 
tions. 

But he hastened to get assistance. Through 
a friend he interested Mr. Rockwood Hoar, 
of Worcester, son of Senator Hoar. Mr. 
Hoar assured the immigration authorities that 
a bond would be given to guarantee that the 
children would not become public charges. 
When the authorities refused to accept any 
bond, he persuaded his father to use his in- 
fluence. The Senator, in his turn, urged that 
the children be admitted, telling the officers 
that their father was an industrious man, fully 
capable of taking care of his family. He re- 
ceived word, in reply, that the terms of the law 
were explicit and that the children with the 
diseased eyes would be sent back on the follow- 
ing Thursday, when the steamer that brought 
them sailed. Exceptions had been made in 
the past in favour of special cases and trouble 
had always followed. The Senator then tele- 
graphed a statement of the case to the officers 
in Washington, but they replied that nothing 



126 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

could be done ; it was contrary to public policy 
to make an exception in favour of any one. 
He then telegraphed to Senator Lodge, who 
was in Washington, and Mr. Lodge made an 
unsuccessful appeal at the Treasury Depart- 
ment. This was on Tuesday. Mr. Hoar tele- 
graphed to the President on Wednesday morn- 
ing, explaining the situation and saying that 
if an exception w^ere ever allowable, it ought to 
be made in this case ; and that the naturalisa- 
tion laws, v/hich gave to the minor children of 
naturalised citizens the same rights as their 
parents, ought not to be nullified by the immi- 
gration laws, or the execution of those laws. 
In less than half an hour after the receipt of 
the despatch, a message left the White House 
ordering the New York immigration officers 
to admit the children at once. 

The President believed that whatever might 
be the terms of the law, its provisions did not 
extend to such cases, and acted accordingly. 
There has seldom been a finer example of the 
genuineness of American democracy. The 



THE HUMAN MAN 137 

highest executive power in the land reached 
down to put into the mother's arms the suffer- 
ing child, barred out by the officers who had 
decided to enforce the letter rather than the 
spirit of the law. It was the appeal of the 
child to the elemental man. 

When the President was in Worcester a few 
months later, he asked about the children, and 
they were taken to him at Senator Hoar's 
house, where, the ailment of their eyes entirely 
cured, they looked the gratitude which their 
tongues, untrained in English, could not 
speak. 

The President frequently shows an interest 
in the families of the men he meets. When 
the train reached Nebraska on one of his tours 
of the country. Governor John H. Mickey 
joined the party to escort it across the com- 
monwealth. The President was delighted to 
meet him and asked many questions, ending 
with : 

"How many children have you. Governor.?" 

"Nine," the Governor replied. 



128 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"You are a mighty good man," said the 
President with evident deHght. "You are a 
better man than I am. I have had only six." 

We have seen his attitude toward children 
and toward the fathers and mothers. His 
theories on the subject of safeguarding the 
future of the race were set forth in a letter 
to Mrs. John Van Vorst, who, in collabora- 
tion with Miss Marie Van Vorst, had recently 
written a remarkable book on the trials of 
working women. It is better to present them 
in full than to summarise them. He wrote: 

White House, 
Washington, D. C, October 18, 1902. 

My. DEAR Mrs. Van Vorst: I must write to 
you to say how much I have appreciated your 
article "The Woman Who Toils." But to 
me there is a most melancholy side to it, when 
you touch upon what is fundamentally in- 
finitely more important than any other ques- 
tion in this country — that is, the question of 
race suicide, complete or partial. 

An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a de- 
sire to be "independent" — that is, to live one's 
life purely according to one's own desires — 



THE HUMAN MAN 129 

are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental 
virtues, for the practice of the strong racial 
qualities, without which there can be no strong 
races — the qualities of courage and resolution 
in both men and women, of scorn of what is 
mean, base, and selfish, of eager desire to work 
or to fight or to suffer, as the case may be, 
provided the end to be attained is great 
enough, and the contemptuous putting aside 
of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoid- 
ance of toil and worry. 

I do not know whether I most pity or most 
despise the foolish and selfish man or woman 
who does not understand that the only things 
really worth having in life are those the ac- 
quirement of which normally means cost and 
effort. If a man or woman, through no fault 
of his or hers, goes throughout life denied of 
those highest of all joys, which spring only 
from home life, from the having and bringing 
up of many healthy children, I feel for them 
deep and respectful sympathy — the sympathy 
one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the 
beginning of the campaign, or the man who 
toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault 
of others. 

But the man or woman who deliberately 
avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to 
know no passion and a brain so shallow and 



130 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect 
a criminal against the race, and should be an 
object of contemptuous abhorrence by all 
healthy people. 

Of course no one quality makes a good 
citizen, and no one quality will save a nation. 
But there are certain great qualities for the 
lack of which no amount of intellectual bril- 
liancy or of material prosperity or of easiness 
of life can atone, and which show decadence 
and corruption in the nation just as much if 
they are produced by selfishness and coldness 
and ease-loving laziness among comparatively 
poor people as if they are produced by vicious 
or frivolous luxury in the rich. 

If the men of the nation are not anxious to 
work in many different ways, with all their 
might and strength, and ready and able to 
fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of 
families, and if the women do not recognise 
that the greatest thing for any woman is to 
be a good wife and mother — why, that nation 
has cause to be alarmed about its future. 

There is no physical trouble among us Ameri- 
cans. The trouble with the situation set forth 
is one of character, and therefore we can con- 
quer it if we only will. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



THE HUMAN MAN 131 

The human side of the man does not mani- 
fest itself in friendliness toward children alone. 
His sympathies are broad enough to take in 
all ages and conditions. When Henry C 
Payne, Postmaster-General, died in Washing- 
ton, October 4, 1904, Mr. Roosevelt stopped 
a moment to talk with a group of newspaper 
correspondents as he was leaving the house of 
death. He asked them if they had known 
Mr. Payne, and when they nearly all replied 
in the affirmative, he said : 

"He was the sweetest, most lovable, and most 
trustful man I have ever known." 

His telegram of sympathy to Mrs. Quay, on 
the death of her husband earlier in the same 
year, was similar. He wrote: 

Mrs. M. S. Quay, Beaver, Penn. : 

Accept my profound sympathy, official and 
personal. Throughout my term as President, 
Senator Quay had been my staunch and loyal 
friend. I had hoped to the last that he would, 
by his sheer courage, pull through his illness. 
Again accept my sympathy. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



132 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

His tribute to the men who were killed by the 
explosion of a gun on the warship Missouriy 
in the spring of 1904, was even more emphatic. 
It was made in a letter to Secretary Moody, 
of the Navy Department, accompanying a 
cheque for one hundred dollars. Here is the 
letter : 

My dear Mr. Secretary: May I send 
through you this contribution to be used for 
the dependent kinsfolk of the enlisted men 
who have just been killed on board the Mis- 
souri? Under the conditions of modern war- 
fare, in order efficiently to prepare for war, 
risk must be run similar in kind, though not 
in degree, to the risk run in battle, and these 
men have died for their country as much as 
if the ship had been in action against the 
enemy. 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

It is the human side of the man that makes 
him believe that good government is more than 
a matter of enforcement of abstract theories. 
It must in some way make human fellowship 
an easier and a less restricted enjoyment. 



THE HUMAN MAN 133 

There is the case of Peter Kelley, for instance. 
Kelley was a young Brooklyn lawyer who was 
sent to the New York Legislature by the 
Democrats in 1883, when Mr. Roosevelt was 
serving in that body. Kelley attached himself 
to Roosevelt, and the two worked together for 
those things in which both believed. The 
Brooklyn Democratic organisation w^as not 
pleased with Kelley's independence and he was 
not renominated. He had given so much atten- 
tion to his legislative duties that his law prac- 
tice suffered and he could not get it back 
again. As time went on he fell ill, and his 
landlord threatened to evict him for non- 
payment of rent. Mr. Roosevelt heard of the 
matter, and sent a cheque for several hundred 
dollars to Kelley, with a message telling him 
to consider it as a loan to be repaid at his 
convenience. Kelley accepted it in the spirit 
in which it was offered. 

Then Mr. Roosevelt was asked to speak at a 
meeting in Brooklyn, held some time after the 
mayoralty election in 1887. He said as he 



134 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

arose, "You wish me to talk about civic reform 
and good citizenship, I suppose." 

Some voices were heard saying "Yes," and 
"That is what we came for." 

"Then," said he, "I will tell you about one 
of your own neighbours, my friend Peter 
Kelley. He is a Democrat, while I am a Re- 
publican, but honesty in public service knows 
no party lines. The first duty of decent 
citizenship is to stand by a good man when 
you have found him ; that is the only way you 
can keep popular government respectable, and 
the people of Brooklyn have not stood by 
Peter Kelley." 

Then he told the story of Kelley's record in 
the Legislature and of the treatment which he 
had received from his party at home, and 
aroused so much admiration and sympathy for 
the man that it began to look as if he would 
have clients enough in the future. And Alfred 
C. Chapin, who had just been elected mayor, 
offered to appoint Kelley to a city office. 
Mr. Roosevelt's appeal to the humanity of his 



THE HUMAN MAN 135 

audience came too late, as Kelley died that 
night. 

Probably the finest illustration of Mr. Roose- 
velt's admiration for the splendid human traits 
in the men with whom he has been associated 
is found in the tribute which he paid to Leonard 
Wood, William H. Taf t, and Elihu Root in his 
speech at the Harvard Commencement dinner, 
June 25, 1902. He reviewed briefly their work 
in the War Department, in the Philippines 
and in Cuba, and concluded : "These three men 
have done that service. I can do nothing for 
them. I can show my appreciation of them 
in no way save the wholly insufficient one of 
standing up for them and for their works, 
and that I will do." 

Dr. Edward Everett Hale appreciated the 
significance of the address, for that same day, 
at a reunion of the members of the Alpha 
Delta Phi fraternity, he said, after Mr. Roose- 
velt had presented a gold medal to him in 
behalf of his fellow- fraternity men : 

"Some of you heard the President's speech. 



136 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

To those who were not there, I say you should 
have been there, because it is a speech not 
to be remembered for a lifetime, but for cen- 
turies, by one who gave every moment he had 
to extol the work of three of his great lieu- 
tenants that they might have the fair honour 
which they deserve. I do not know that there 
is anything like it in literature, where a chief 
has stood so loyally by three men who stood 
so loyally by him and the country as well." 

When he attended his class reunion at Har- 
vard in 1905, on the twenty-fifth anniversary 
of his graduation, he manifested the same dis- 
position to say a good word for others. It was 
at the meeting of the alumni, presided over 
by Bishop Lavrrence, of Massachusetts, presi- 
dent of the association, that he said: 

"I speak on behalf of the younger men here 
present when I say that we shall count our- 
selves more than happy if we can in any way 
approach the service of the older men of Har- 
vard to the Union. In Bishop Lawrence's very 
touching introduction of me he spoke of the 



THE HUMAN MAN 137 

effort I am making for peace. [The Presi- 
dent's intervention in the war between Russia 
and Japan, which was later followed by a ces- 
sation of hostilities and a treaty of peace.] 
Of course I am for peace. Of course every 
President who is fit to be President is for 
peace. But I am for one thing before peace — 
I am for righteousness first, and for peace, be- 
cause normal peace is the instrument for ob- 
taining righteousness. I am speaking now on 
behalf of the class of '80, and as nobody else 
has blown our horn for us I am going to blow 
it j ust a little. We have followed the example 
so admirably set by the class of '79 in seek- 
ing to show in practical fashion our desire 
to do something for the University. Acting 
largely under the lead of Mr. Robert Bacon, 
we have raised — gentlemen, I am going to ask 
you to give nine cheers for Robert Bacon." 
The President led the cheering and continued : 
"We have raised a fund to be used without 
conditions at all for the benefit of the Univer- 
sity, but we hope it will be used in increasing 



138 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the salaries of those employed to teach in 
Harvard University. We ought to raise sal- 
aries for the sake of giving a more adequate 
reward to the men. But even if they would go 
on working at improperly low salaries, we 
ought to give them decent ones for the sake of 
our own self-respect." 

It Is this sort of whole-souled plea for others 
that is partly responsible for the great affec- 
tion in which the country seems to hold him, 
an affection so great that even the children 
share it and speak of him familiarly. A school- 
teacher in Syracuse disclosed this mental atti- 
tude when she asked a little girl in class to 
name the head of the government. 

"]\Ir. Roosevelt," she replied. 

"That is right, but what is his official title .f*" 

"Teddy !" was the instant response, made 
with great assurance. 

Even the small boys who are taken to Wash- 
ington by their fathers to see the President 
get impatient in the waiting-room and ask : 

"When are we going to see Teddy?" and 



THE HUMAN MAN 139 

again, "Is this where Teddy Roosevelt 
works?" 

Mr. Roosevelt's interest in the old home of 
his mother in Roswell, Georgia, and in the old 
family servants, manifested during his visit 
there in 1905, has been well described by Mr. 
Ralph Smith, who says that as the President's 
carriage passed through Roswell on the way to 
the homestead on the hill an old man shouted : 

"There's Teddy, Martha's son!" 

The President himself made a low bow and 
waved his hand in the direction of the old man. 
At the homestead "Mom" Grace and "Daddy" 
Williams, old servants of the Bullocks, had 
gathered with the Wing family and their rela- 
tives. When the President and his party 
reached the house the people assembled were 
introduced by Senator Clay to the President 
and Mrs. Roosevelt. It was not long before 
the President's attention was drawn to an old 
negro woman, stooped under the weight of 
years, her skin black and wrinkled. 

"This is Auntie Grace," said one of the 



UO THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

ladies, who had noticed Mr. Roosevelt's evi- 
dent interest. 

"Mom Grace, you mean, don't you?" asked 
he. "I have ahvays heard her called 'Mom' 
Grace, not Auntie Grace." 

"Yes, sah," said the old woman ; "dis am 
'Mom Grace,' Miss Mittie's nuss, and you was 
Miss Mittie's son.?" she asked. 

"Yes, Mom Grace, I am INIiss Mittie's son, 
and I am certainly very happy to see you," 
and the President cordially grasped the old 
woman's hand. 

"I sho' 'member Miss Mittie, just like it was 
yestiddy," she said, "and I sho' is happy to 
see you, too." 

"Where is Daddy Williams.?" the President 
asked, referring to a servant who had been 
raised as a slave by the family. 

The old man was brought forward and was 
greeted heartily. The President then turned 
to Mrs. E. H. Wood and asked about the 
"beautiful bed of violets that my mother used 
to talk about." It was shown to him with 



THE HUMAN MAN 141 

many flowers in blossom. Then he desh'ed to 
see the old well that was used as a cold-storage 
vault. He went through the house from top 
to bottom and explored the back yard, talking 
all the time of the many things which his 
mother had told him of the place. Finally he 
stood for his photograph on the front porch. 
Before the group was posed he said: 

"Where are Mom Grace and Daddy Will- 
iams.^ They must be in this picture." 

And Theodore Roosevelt, son of Martha Bul- 
lock, stood before the Southern homestead be- 
side his mother's old black nurse and another 
family servant, an intensely human man yield- 
ing to the natural impulses of interest in the 
all that pertained to the life of his family in 
the generation before him. 



VII 
THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 

Some day men may wonder whether ]\Ir. 
Roosevelt's Ideals were formed by his study of 
the little volume of Burns which he carried 
with him while herding cattle, or whether he 
read Burns because the Scotchman's sympa- 
thetic democracy appealed to him. Certain 
it is that he is entirely free from the affecta- 
tions which Burns despised, for he has in- 
sisted in season and out of season that "a man's 
a man," whatever may be the outward gar- 
ments that clothe the manly spirit. 

He seems to have given to himself the advice 
that the Texan gave to his son who was about 
to go to New York. 

"Whenever you meet a man," said the Texan, 
"who allows he's your superior, you just look 
at him and say to yourself, 'After all, you're 
just folks.' You want to remember for your- 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 143 

self, too, that you're just folks. After you 
have lived as long as I have, and knocked 
round the world, you'll learn that that's all 
any one of us is — just folks." 

He has never regarded himself as better than 
anybody else and has never asked that rules be 
suspended in his behalf. Years ago, while he 
was still a very young man, he visited the Yel- 
lowstone Park. His seat mate on the stage 
that carried the party from the railroad to the 
park says: 

"When we reached .the government station, 
at the entrance to the national park, an official 
asked that all hunting arms be passed to him 
in order that he might seal them. Mr. Roose- 
velt promptly turned his guns over to the offi- 
cer ; but the man instantly recognised the trav- 
eller and offered them back. The recognition 
was mutual. 

" *Your guns are all right, Mr. Roosevelt,' 
said the government officer in a low tone. 

" 'No ; they have no seals upon them,' was 
the prompt reply. 



144 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

" 'I can trust jou,' answered the inspector. 

" 'Not on your life,' answered the visitor. 
'Seal 'em up ! No special privileges for me, 
just because we have met before, old man.' 

"And Mr. Roosevelt's guns were sealed like 
the others." 

Mr. Roosevelt might have been different, for 
we find men, descended from honourable an- 
cestors and blessed with inherited wealth, who 
think that the}^ are better than others and talk 
about the "lower orders" and the importance 
of rescuing control of government from the 
plain people because they do not agree with 
those pleased to call themselves the "educated 
classes." It would have been easy for Mr. 
Roosevelt to have fallen in with the theories 
and practices of the people who believe in gov- 
ernment by the few on the ground that the 
many cannot be trusted to decide what is good 
for them. But the notion of imposing govern- 
ment from above on anybody save the crimi- 
nal, seems never to have occurred to him as a 
just or a righteous thing. As previously re- 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 145 

corded, he told a New York audience in 1890 
that he had more confidence in the virile 
vicious than in the inefficient and degenerate 
"higher society." He only elaborated this 
idea when he said on another occasion : 

"For m^^self, I'd work as quick beside Pat 
Dugan as with the last descendants of the 
Patroon. It literally makes no difference to 
me, so long as the work is good and the man is 
in earnest. I would have the young men 
work. I'd try to develop and work out an 
ideal of mine, the theory of the duty of the 
leisure classes to the community. I have tried 
to do it by example, and it is what I have 
preached — first and foremost, to be American, 
heart and soul, and to go with any person, 
heedless of anything but that man's personal 
qualifications." 

It is always the man that counts with him. 
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp." And 
when he has found a man he is always loyal to 
him. All those who have had anything to do 
with him know this. He showed it in Bangor, 



146 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Maine, when he was there in the summer of 
1902. At a suitable pause in the proceedings 
of the meeting which he was addressing he 
went to the edge of the platform and called 
out: 

"If 'Old Bill' Sewall is in town I want him to 
join me at luncheon, for I feel like a man who 
has lost a partner in a crowd." 

It was William Wingate Sewall, of Island 
Falls, that he wanted, the man who went West 
with him when he bought his ranch in Dakota 
Territory. There was a scurrying hunt for 
Sewall, and when he was found he shared the 
honours of the day with the President. 

"I knew that if the President knew I was 
around," said he in the evening, when the ex- 
citement had subsided somewhat, "he'd have 
me right with him, but I didn't think it would 
be anything like this. I have known him for 
twenty-three years — ever since he was a col- 
lege boy. We didn't talk much about politics 
to-day. We had other things to talk about." 

According to General Charles F. Manderson, 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 147 

former United States Senator from Nebraska, 
Mr. Roosevelt's democratic manner had a 
somewhat starthng effect on a prominent Eng- 
lishman who saw him when he was Governor 
of New York. 

"I was in Buffalo, attending a meeting of 
the American Bar Association," said General 
Manderson, who was its president. "Among 
the distinguished guests present from abroad 
was Sir William Kenned}^, of London, eminent 
in the profession, and one of the justices of 
the High Court of Justice of Great Britain 
and president of the International Law Asso- 
ciation. 

"One night while seated in the parlour of 
our hotel the attention of the English lawyers 
who were present was attracted by consider- 
able hilarity in an adjoining room. Later on 
the door opened and in walked Governor 
Roosevelt. He greeted me in his usual breezy 
fashion, and in explanation of his presence in 
town stated that he had been addressing some 
of the agricultural societies of the State and 



148 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

had come to Buffalo to dine and spend the 
evening with a number of his personal and 
political friends. He spoke to me of having 
lately attended a reunion of Rough Riders, 
and greatly amused and interested me and the 
group of foreign gentlemen, all of them law- 
yers, seated near, with a vivid and picturesque 
description of his army life in Cuba ; of the 
life on the plains in which he had figured, 
with tales of bucking bronchos and cavorting 
steers with heads aloft and tails over their 
backs in wild stampede. He also gave inter- 
esting bits of hunting scenes, and wound up 
with some unique views of men and things in- 
teresting to him in his brief but strenuous 
existence. 

"I took advantage of a pause in the conversa- 
tion," General Manderson continues, "to in- 
troduce the foreign gentlemen present. After 
Mr. Roosevelt had taken his departure. Sir 
William Kennedy broke out with, 'But, I say. 
Senator, that is a very remarkable man, you 
know, a very remarkable man. And you say 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 149 

he Is Governor of New York. That is very 
surprising, you know. I really can't say that 
1 ever before met exactly such a man. And he 
seems to be a fighter. I rather like that in 
him. And you say he is a writer of high re- 
pute, too? Well, by Jove, he is the queerest 
combination I have ever met.' 

"During the summer of 1901, while I was in 
London, I again met Sir William. Mr. Roose- 
velt's impressive individuality still dominated 
his mind, for after indulging in some prelimi- 
nary conversation he remarked: 'By the way, 
I see that your friend Roosevelt, whom we met 
in Buffalo, is Vice-President. That is very as- 
tonishing, very astonishing, indeed. I was 
much interested in him at the time and have 
watched his course and have read some of his 
writings. He seems to write as well as he 
fights, and is very young to have had such an 
eventful career.' 

"I told him to watch the future and not be 
astonished at what could be achieved by young 
men in this young country of ours. I then in- 



150 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

creased his amazement by telling him the story 
of Roosevelt's nomination as Vice-President, 
and how it was forced upon him. When he 
heard that his great desire was to be re-elected 
as Governor of New York, that he might carry 
out certain bold reforms, the amazement of 
this intelligent and appreciative jurist in- 
creased. 

"Sir William Kennedy was in this country 
again in the summer of 1904," General Man- 
derson concluded, "and I met him at the Con- 
gress of Lawyers in St. Louis. He has ceased 
to be amazed, and his astonishment has given 
way to the satisfaction that all prominent 
Englishmen seem to feel over the advancement 
of this typical American." 

The human and humane things seem to be 
easy for him, even though at times it means 
taking note of trivial matters. One day while 
Governor he was walking from the Capitol in 
Albany, accompanied by a friend, when he 
noticed two sturdy but tired horses striving 
to haul a load up the ice-covered street. 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 151 

One of the horses sHpped. Mr. Roosevelt 
stopped at once, and with the absorbed ex- 
pression on his face which he wears when 
deeply interested, watched the horse get up 
on his feet. The animal stumbled again and 
fell. 

"Stop a moment," Mr. Roosevelt said to the 
driver. "Drive sideways." 

The man did not recognise the Governor and 
was about to curse him for interfering when 
Mr. Roosevelt caught his eye. Then the man 
zigzagged his horses up the hill past the ice 
with never a word. 

The grim look on the Governor's face dis- 
appeared as quickly as it came, and the next 
moment he had lifted his hat to a little child 
who had saluted him in military fashion. 

With equal sympathy he relieved the em- 
barrassment of a new page who was overawed 
by his boyish idea of the greatness of the head 
of the State government. The boy had to 
deliver a message to the Governor and he en- 
tered the executive chamber with his heart in 



152 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

his throat and his knees trembling from em- 
barrassment. When he reappeared from the 
room after delivering the note he was smiling 
blissfully, and as he met another page he 
exclaimed enthusiastically : 

"Say, ain't Teddy a peach!" 

Neither as Governor of his own State, nor 
yet as President, has he for one moment for- 
gotten that he is "just folks." He does chafe, 
however, under the awesome manner with 
which he is sometimes approached. In refer- 
ring to this subject in conversation with a 
friend at dinner, he said : 

"I am losing all my manners. The ladies 
won't sit down where I am unless I sit down 
first." 

When a woman from Jacksonville, Florida, 
was presented to him in his office, she an- 
nounced : 

"Mr. President, I have come all this way 
just to see you. I have never seen a live 
President before." 

"Well, well," was the reply, while the woman 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 153 

looked shocked, "I hope you don't feel disap- 
pointed, now that you have seen one. Lots 
of people in these parts go all the way to 
Jacksonville to see a live alligator." 

He surprised a painter who was at work on 
the White House just as he astonished the 
woman from Jacksonville. He went out of 
the house one day to see how the men were 
getting on with their work. One of them was 
swinging his brush in a leisurely fashion and 
Mr. Roosevelt stopped near him to see how 
slowly the man could work. Pretty soon he 
demanded : 

"How much do you get a day.'*" 

"Three and a quarter," the painter replied. 

"That's big pay for such pleasant work," re- 
joined the President. "When I was a boy I 
used to think that I would like to be a painter. 
It always appealed to me because you can see 
something accomplished with each stroke of 
the brush." 

By this time Mr. Roosevelt was close beside 
the man, who asked him if he did not want to 



154 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

try his hand at painting now, and offered his 
brush. Much to his surprise, the President 
took it and for a time covered the wall with 
paint at a rapid rate. He went over fully ten 
square feet of surface before he surrendered 
the brush. Then he nodded, as much as to 
say, "That is the way you ought to work," 
and walked over to a gang of men who were 
shovelling dirt into a waggon. 

One of his South Dakota friends went to 
Washington to renew his acquaintance with 
Mr. Roosevelt soon after he became President. 
While he was there he attended a musicale at 
the White House. At the close of the pro- 
gramme — classical music only had been 
played — some one asked the man banteringly 
how he had liked the entertainment. 

"I am afraid," he replied dryly, as many 
another man would have done, "Pm afraid it 
was a spell too far up the gulch for me." 

The President, who heard the pertinent criti- 
cism, laughed heartily, turned to the man's 
wife and saved the situation by remarking 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 155 

"You'd better take care of the captain's pis- 
tol. I know that out in his country they shoot 
the fiddler when he doesn't play the tunes they 
want." 

In the autumn of 1903 a committee of labour 
men from Montana went to Washington to 
talk about the labour situation in that State. 
Before entering on the discussion of their 
business the President entertained them at 
luncheon, with Secretary Cortelyou, of the 
Department of Labour and Commerce; Car- 
roll D. Wright, Labour Commissioner ; Repre- 
sentative Dixon of Montana, and Wayne Mc- 
Veagh, as the other guests. He told the labour 
man he was "as glad to welcome them as he 
would be to receive seven of the richest and 
most influential men in the country," and then 
led the conversation around to life in the West, 
with which his guests were familiar, and still 
further appealed to them by stories of his own 
experience. 

"The best meal I have ever eaten," said he, 
among other things, "or at least, the one that 



156 THE MANYtSIDED ROOSEVELT 

tasted best, I got in Butte, and it cost me just 
twenty-five cents. 

"In 1885, Jack Willis, a cow-boy friend of 
mine, and I landed in Butte. Our remittances 
had been delayed and we had just half a dol- 
lar between us. We were so hungry we could 
hardly see, and we were much afraid that our 
fifty cents would not go far toward satisfying 
our appetites. 

"Finally we found a twenty-five-cent restau- 
rant — not a Chinese restaurant, either — and 
the meal we got there made us happy and con- 
tent. The next day our money reached us 
and we were all right. But ever since then 
I have had a warm place in my heart for 
Butte." 

His human sympathy has made it possible for 
for him to get enjoyment out of many novel 
situations. The Kansas City newspapers have 
preserved an instance of his geniality, shown 
at the time of his visit to that city in 1903. 
As the parade in his honour was passing along 
Walnut Street a cowboy stepped over the 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 157 

rope that was holding back the spectators — 
he was tall enough to step over it easily — and, 
taking off his sombrero with a courtly flourish, 
as the President appeared, he yelled : 

"Hello, Ted!" 

The President looked around suddenly, a 
broad smile spread over his features, and he 
slowly and distinctly winked his left eye at the 
man in the street. 

When the police succeeded in getting the 
cowboy back behind the rope, where he be- 
longed and where he was among his friends, 
he exclaimed enthusiastically : 

"Did you see him recognise me? Why, me 
and Ted used to ride the range together in 
Wyoming. We're old pals. Did you see him 
wink t'other eye? He knows me all right." 

Mr. Roosevelt has not yet confessed whether 
he knew the man, or only knew what would 
please him. 

Since he has been President, he has always 
tried to gratify the desire of the people to see 
him. On his tours of the country he has 



158 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

recognised the propriety of the curiosity of 
the people to look on a "live President," even 
though he does smile when they confess that 
curiosity in Washington. 

"I had the honour to be the guest of the 
President during his journey through the 
Eighth Congressional District of Iowa," said 
Colonel Hepburn, the representative of that 
district, in discussing this subject. "The 
schedule provided for five stops, at which times 
the President made some remarks to the vast 
crowds of people who had gathered to see the 
Chief Executive. We passed through, per- 
haps, twenty towns where no stops were made, 
but the President insisted that the train should 
slow up at every station, and no matter what 
he happened to be engaged in doing at the 
time, he instantly ran to the rear platform and 
bowed, and in some instances waved his hat 
or handkerchief to the masses of people who 
had expected to get only a glimpse of a fly- 
ing train bearing the President of the United 
States. 



Hi 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 159 

"It was raining at one of the points where a 
stop was made," Colonel Hepburn continued, 
"and the President was to take a short drive 
and inspect the town. The committee on re- 
ception had provided a covered carriage, but 
the President insisted that the top should be 
lowered even though it exposed him to the 
storm. As the top was dropped he remarked : 

" 'These thousands of people have assembled 
this bad day to see their President ; if they can 
stand to walk in the rain, I guess I can stand 
it to ride a few minutes in the rain.' 

"At the town of Diagonal, the President was 
making a speech. An old crippled soldier 
hobbled along and tried to find a seat without 
success. The President stopped and said: 

" 'I cannot proceed until that old soldier 
is provided with a place to sit.' 

"At one point the President looked out of the 
window of the car and a few rods ahead saw a 
farmer in his working clothes with bared head, 
standing alongside the track that ran through 
his cornfield. Realising that the farmer in- 



160 THE MAXY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

tended to show his respect for the President 
of the United States as he was borne by on the 
rushing train. ^Mr. Roosevelt, without stop- 
ping to excuse himself to the men he was talk- 
ing with, seized his hat, dashed to the rear 
platform, swung it in the air and bowed." 

Mr. Roosevelt's approachableness impresses 
itself upon all who have an^-thing to do with 
him, whether it be the members of the Diplo- 
matic Corps (the representative of the Ger- 
man Embassy, who accompanied him on one of 
his tours, was astounded at the heartiness 
with which he entered into the spirit of a bur- 
lesque dinner in the dining car which the news- 
paper men on the train gave in the President's 
honour) or whether it be his own country- 
men of whatever station. 

" 'Mr. Roosevelt is by all odds the most 
democratic President we have had since the 
days of Jefferson.' 

"These words," says Mr. Eggleston in the 
interesting account of his visit to the Presi- 
dent referred to in a previous chapter, "were 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAX 161 

spoken to me in Washington the other da}' by 
a gentlewoman who has Hved long, travelled 
much, and observed closely, and who, by 
reason of her high social position, has had the 
entree of the White House for thirty years 
or more. 

"I quoted the utterance to Mr. Roosevelt 
soon afterward," ]\Ir. Eggleston continues, 
*Svhen I had the pleasure of passing an hour 
or two with him in the private, residential part 
of the Executive Mansion. His answer was 
quick, as his answers are apt to be when any- 
thing interests him. 

" 'I am democratic,' he said, with emphasis 
on the verb, *if the word democratic is used in 
its legitimate sense. But I have no patience 
with the vulgarly ostentatious avoidance of os- 
tentation which sometimes calls itself "demo- 
cratic." I have no sympathy with the thought 
that in order to be democratic one must put 
aside respect for the gentle decencies of life 
and make a boor or a clown of himself. I 
believe thoroughly in the simplicities and the 



162 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

honesties of life and in the fellowship of all 
honest and sincere men. But it doesn't appeal 
to me when a man refuses to wear the cus- 
tomary garb of gentlemen lest aristocratic 
pretensions be attributed to him.' 

"You do not think, then," Mr. Eggleston 
interjected, "that one need go to a public din- 
ner without cuffs in order to demonstrate his 
democracy ?^^ 

"The President laughed, and his laugh was 
sufficient answer to my question," says Mr. 
Eggleston. "But presently he added: 

" 'It is my endeavour to make of the White 
House during my term, not a second-rate pal- 
ace, like that of some insignificant prince, but 
the home of a self-respecting American citi- 
zen who has been called for a time to serve his 
countrymen in executive office. There seems 
to be a world of difference between democracy 
and demagogy. The one is based upon an 
honest and sincere respect for one's fellow-men, 
the other involves the sacrifice of self-respect 
in an appeal to vulgarity and prejudice.' 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 163 

"As Mr. Roosevelt earnestly said this," com- 
ments Mr. Eggleston, "I could not avoid re- 
calling that passage in the novel called 'Democ- 
racy,' in which it is recorded that a certain 
Senator of the cuffless sort gravely doubted 
the prudence of taking a daily bath lest the 
practice be regarded by his constituents as 
'savouring of aristocracy.' " 

Mr. Eggleston has also recorded the impres- 
sion which he received of the President's 
appreciation of the dignity of the great office 
that he occupies : "He is first of all a gentle- 
man, with all a gentleman's self-respect. He 
is, secondly, an American citizen, so strongly 
imbued with a sense of the dignity of Ameri- 
can citizenship that he makes his respectful 
bow to it whenever he meets It. He is, thirdly, 
the chosen representative of seventy-five mil- 
lion people, selected from their number by 
their willing suffrages to occupy the highest 
office within their gift. He maintains all of 
dignity that his high office demands of him. 
He has all the winning and easy courtesy for 



164 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

those who approach him that any gentleman 
shows to the stranger within his gates. And 
with due respect to those imperative obhga- 
tions, he has all that any American citizen can 
have of frank and generous recognition of 
other citizenship than his own. When he 
comes out of his sanctum, as I saw him do a 
little while ago, to greet the miscellaneous 
throng of persons who daily call, with no other 
purpose than the idle one of shaking hands, 
he does so precisely as he might enter his draw- 
ing-room at Oyster Bay to converse with as- 
sembled guests. There is no formality or air 
of state in his demeanour ; but there is equally 
nothing of assumed familiarity. He does not 
sit or stand, as former Presidents have done, to 
have his guests 'presented.' He simply moves 
about among them, as one does in his parlour, 
greeting each pleasantly, saying whatever 
there is to be said of friendliness or courtesy, 
and if one previously known to him happens 
to be in the assemblage, grasping his hand 
with special cordiality and making pleasant 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 165 

reference to some previous occasion of meet- 
ing. In brief, President Roosevelt receives 
his morning callers in the White House pre- 
cisely as plain Mr. Theodore Roosevelt has 
always received his callers in his own home. 
And he sends them away at last, happy and 
with the feeling that there has been nothing 
of arrogance in his reception of them, and 
especially nothing of condescension. This 
robustly healthy American citizen who is our 
chief executive has no sympathy with the inso- 
lence either of arrogance or of condescen- 
sion." 

How true this last statement is was well illus- 
trated when, as Civil Service Commissioner, 
he kept President Harrison waiting while he 
'showed an errand boy the shortest route from 
the Treasury Building to the Capitol. 

He goes about his business as any other self- 
respecting citizen, making himself incon- 
spicuous rather than thrusting himself for- 
ward. This has been his habit for years. 
When he was president. of the Police Commis- 



166 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

sion in New York, he attended the Bourke 
Cockran meeting in Madison Square Garden 
in the autumn of 1896. I chanced to sit two 
rows behind the arena box which had been re- 
served for him. As he entered the hall, the 
people began to crane their necks and look 
at him, and "There's Roosevelt," was heard 
from many voices as he walked along. INIen 
stopped him to grasp his hand, and he would 
respond briefly and hasten along, evidently 
anxious to escape the crowd. When he 
reached the box he went to the back of it and 
got behind the gentlemen who were with him, 
apparently desiring to hide 'himself from the 
curious eyes that seemed to follow his every 
move. 

In Washington he has also striven to make 
himself inconspicuous, and has succeeded In 
walking about the city many times without 
attracting special attention. For instance, 
one December Sunday afternoon when Connec- 
ticut Avenue was full of dignitaries he walked 
through the street without being recognised. 



THE DExMOCRATIC MA^N 167 

He wore a faded brown coat, which was tightly 
buttoned about his chest to keep out the biting 
wind. An old weather-beaten hat was pulled 
down on his head, the brim half concealing his 
face. His shoes were heavy and covered with 
mud. His companion was a short man, fash- 
ionably clad, with a silk hat on his head. The 
two men were earnestly talking, and one giving 
only a casual glance at the couple might have 
thought that the larger, roughly dressed man 
was asking the other for a quarter to pay for 
a night's lodging. The conversation con- 
tinued till the pair came in sight of the White 
House, where a little black newsboy caught 
sight of them. His face lit up with a smile of 
recognition. 

"Hello!" he was heard to say to himself. 
"Marse Teddy!" 

The boy was about the only person who had 
discovered the President in the unconven- 
tional attire that he had put on for a long 
walk in the country with his Attorney- 
General. 



168 THE ^TANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Another picture of him in Washington may 
be worth while preserving. He is fond of the 
theatre ; but he uses it for relaxation and sees 
the light comedies and comic operas which can 
be enjoyed, when enjoyed at all, with little 
mental exertion. When he was present at such 
a performance in the early winter of 1905 a 
little Boston terrier belonging to one of the 
young women in the chorus found its way to 
the stage, attracted thither by the lights. 
The dog got in front of the line of 
dancing and singing young women, looked 
about, stretched, and yawned. Everybody 
laughed, including Mr. Roosevelt. The 
dog heard the President's laugh and strolled 
over toward the side of the stage, sat 
down and looked at the man. Mr. Roosevelt 
smiled back at the dog. In a second or two 
he gathered himself for a jump and leaped 
over the side of the box into the President's 
lap and settled down contentedly. Mr. Roose- 
velt fondled the animal a moment and then 
lifted him back to the stage to the accompani- 



THE DEMOCRATIC MAN 169 

merit of wild and enthusiastic applause, and 
the performance, which had been interrupted 
by the incident, was resumed ; but the audience 
for a time thought more of the instructive 
confidence with which the dog had appealed 
to the President's interest than of the play on 
the stage. 



VIII 
THE LITERARY MAN 



Mr. Roosevelt early decided to use his pen. 
He had inherited fortune enough so that it 
was not necessary for him to work for a mere 
subsistence, but he was not content to be idle. 
His energies had to be employed in some way, 
and the pursuit of literature appealed to him. 
Later, as his family grew, he confessed to 
friends that it had now become necessary for 
him to write if he was to give his children the 
education which he desired for them. The in- 
come from his inheritance was not large 
enough of itself. 

His first book was a naval history of the War 
of 1812, which was published when he was 
twenty-four years old, and had been out of 
college only two years. The reason the sub- 
ject attracted him was characteristic. The 
histories which he had read were one-sided. 



THE LITERARY MAN m 

They gave too much credit to the American 
Navy and too Httle to the. British. The facts 
were not fairly presented. He thought that, 
in justice to both sides, a more accurate ac- 
count of the war with a more impartial esti- 
mate of the military significance of the vic- 
tories ought to be prepared. He did this work 
so successfully that the critics of greatest au- 
thority commended him, declaring that "the 
impartiality of the author's judgment and the 
thoroughness with which the evidence is sifted 
are remarkable and worthy of high praise." 
When an English publisher prepared a his- 
tory of the British Navy Mr. Roosevelt was 
asked to write the history of its exploits in this 
war. He made himself an authority on the 
subject at an age when other young men are 
authorities only on tennis, baseball, polo, golf, 
or, possibly, bridge whist. 

His next book grew out of his ranching ex- 
periences, and was pubhshed in 1885, three 
years after the first. It was called "Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman : Sketches of Sport on 



173 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the Northern Cattle Plains, together with Per- 
sonal Experiences of Life on a Cattle Ranch." 
It was profusely illustrated, and first pub- 
lished in an edition limited to five hundred 
copies and sold by subscription for fifteen dol- 
lars. In honour of the author's ranch town, 
it was called the "Medora Edition." 

His literary and historical reputation was 
sufficiently established by this time for the 
publishers of a series of biographies of Ameri- 
can statesmen to ask him to write the lives of 
Thomas Hart Benton and Gouverneur Morris. 
These were published in separate volumes, in 
1886 and 1887. And in 1887 there also ap- 
peared with his name on the title-page a vol- 
ume of "Essays on Practical Politics." An- 
other volume based on his Western experiences 
came out the next year, with the title "Ranch 
Life and the Hunting Trail." It is devoted 
to a description of life on the plains as it was 
lived in the early eighties of the last century. 
That life is fast disappearing with the fencing 
of the ranges and the growing density of pop- 



THE LITERARY MAN 173 

ulation. Mr. Roosevelt's book will be increas- 
ingly interesting, not only as a record of ex- 
periences of one of the Presidents, but also 
as an account of conditions that once existed 
in the West. 

In 1889 the first two volumes of "Winning 
of the West" appeared, his historical work of 
greatest dignity and value. The third volume 
was published in 1894. It deals with the 
period from 1784 to 1790, and describes the 
founding of the trans-Allegheny common- 
wealths. What happened in the period cov- 
ered by the volume, Mr. Roosevelt briefly 
summarises in the preface. "It was during 
those seven years," he writes, "that the Con- 
stitution was adopted and actually went into 
effect; an event, if possible, even more mo- 
mentous for the West than for the East. 
The time was one of vital importance to the 
whole nation ; alike to the people of the inland 
frontier and to those of the seaboard. The 
course of events during those years determined 
whether we should become a mighty nation or 



174 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

a mere snarl of weak and quarrelsome little 
commonwealths, with a history as bloody and 
meaningless as that of the Spanish- American 
states." 

It should be noted here by the student of Mr. 
Roosevelt's intellectual and political growth, 
that for many years he has been occupied with 
the study of the development and expansion 
of the United States, from the point of view of 
the historian, modified by the experience of 
practical political life. It was not as a mere 
tyro that he entered upon the management of 
the executive affairs of the government in ac- 
cordance with the national policy that had 
grown up during a century. If fate had in- 
tended him for the Presidency, he could have 
had no better training in Americanism, 
properly so called, than he secured through 
his studies for this book. The fourth volume 
of it was published in 1896, and in 1898 he 
was planning to complete the fifth volume if 
he should not be elected Governor of New 
York. 



THE LITERARY MAN 175 

His historical studies have not been confined 
to the incorporation of the great West into 
the nation. He has written a "History of 
New York City," published in 1891, in which 
he says : "It has been my aim less to collect 
new facts than to draw from the immense 
storehouse of facts already collected those 
which were of real importance in New York 
history, and to show their true meaning and 
their relations to one another; to sketch the 
workings of the town's life, social, commercial, 
and political, at successive periods, with their 
sharp transformations and contrasts, and to 
trace the causes which graduallj^ changed the 
little Dutch trading hamlet into a huge Ameri- 
can city." 

These historical subjects are peculiarly 
American, involving either the absorption of 
vast territory into the national domain or the 
building of a great city from the many and 
diverse peoples that have sought freedom of 
opportunity to live their life in their own way 
on these shores. 



176 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

His history of New York was followed in 
1893 by "The Wilderness Hunter: an Ac- 
count of the Big Game of the United States, 
and Its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle." 
This is a hunting history, illustrated with pic- 
tures of the animals killed by Mr. Roosevelt 
himself, besides much interesting hunting lore. 
He collaborated with G. B. Grinnell in writing 
three hunting books for the Boone and 
Crockett Club, namely, "American Big Game 
Hunting," "Hunting in Many Lands," and 
"Trail and Camp Fire." He also collaborated 
with Henry Cabot Lodge in the preparation 
of a volume of "Hero Tales from American 
History." 

In 1897, ten years after his first volume of 
political essays, he published another collec- 
tion under the title "American Ideals ; and 
Other Essays, Social and Political." The sub- 
jects of the various chapters show pretty well 
the range of his interests. Here they are: 
"True Americanism;" "The Manly Virtues 
and Practical Politics ;" "The College Grad- 



THE LITERARY MAN 177 

uate and Public Life ;" "Phases of State Leg- 
islation ;" "Machine Pohtics in New York 
City;" "Six Years of Civil Service Reform;" 
"Administering the New York Police Force ;" 
"The Vice-Presidency and the Campaign of 
1896;" "How Not to Help Our Poorer 
Brother ;" "The Monroe Doctrine ;" "Wash- 
ington's Forgotten Maxims ;" "National Life 
and Character;" "Social Evolution;" and 
"The Law of Civilisation and Decay." 

He told the story of the raising of the regi- 
ment of Rough Riders and of its career in 
Cuba and afterward, in a volume published 
in 1899. As the regiment itself was unique, 
this history is unrivalled for the frankness with 
which the story is told, and for the skill of 
the writer in selecting from a large mass of 
materials that which would give the proper 
impression of what was done, and at the same 
time preserve the human interest in a military 
campaign. 

In the following year he published a "Life of 
Oliver Cromwell," which is deeply interesting, 



178 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 



for it presents the picture of one man of 
action through the eyes of another man of 
action, who is also at the same time a trained 
writer and student of history. His third vol- 
ume of essays, "The Strenuous Life," ap- 
peared in 1900 also. And in 1902, "The 
Deer Family," another hunting book, was 
issued, with his name as collaborator with 
others on the title-page. A volume of his 
"Addresses and Messages" came from the 
press in the spring of 1904, but that is the 
ordinary product of his public life rather than 
the deliberate work of a literary man. His 
latest book, "Outdoor Pastimes of an Ameri- 
can Hunter," appeared in the autumn of 
1905. It contains the record of his hunting 
excursions after he became President, and in- 
cludes the cougar hunt of 1901, the Yellow- 
stone trip with John Burroughs in 1903, the 
Yosemite trip of the same year, the wolf hunt 
in Oklahoma, and the bear hunt in Colorado 
in the spring of 1905. A most remarkable 
illustration of his versatility is found in an 



THE LITERARY MAN 179 

article from his pen on the "Ancient Irish 
Sagas," which appeared in the Century 
Magazine for January, 1907. 

These books on varied subjects, pubhshed 
during a period covering more than twenty 
years, certainl}'- justify calhng him a hterary 
man. Indeed, the profession of literature is 
the only one which he has, save that of state- 
craft ; and he was about equally occupied with 
both till the demands of official life absorbed 
his attention. In the spring of 1904, when 
he spoke at a dinner of the Periodical Pub- 
lishers' Association in Washington, he took 
a retrospective look at his literary career, as 
though it were ended, for he said, "In the 
days of my youth I was a literary man." 

A pleasant picture of him on this occasion 
was presented by Mr. Walter Wellman in the 
Chicago Record-Herald. He wrote: 

"Probably President Roosevelt never spent a 
happier two hours than last night, when he 
was the guest of honour of the Periodical Pub- 
lishers. The President had agreed to stay at 



180 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

the dinner from 9.45 to 11 o'clock, but he 
liked the show so well he remained till mid- 
night and then held a reception, greeting 
every one present. Mr. Roosevelt made a 
speech to the publishers, the authors and 
artists and their other guests, and was enthu- 
siastically applauded. It was not the best 
speech the President has ever made, but it was 
good enough, and it pleased the people who 
heard it. Mr. Roosevelt is not an orator, and 
makes no pretensions in that direction, but 
there is something very fascinating about his 
earnestness, and he captivated the men of the 
periodical press, as he has captivated many 
audiences before. Many were pleased at the 
manner in which Mr. Roosevelt threw himself 
into the spirit of the occasion. The wit and 
the humour of the addresses had no more ap- 
preciative listener than the President of the 
United States. He expressed his pleasure by 
characteristic shakes of the head, strenuous 
gestures, broad smiles, and congratulations 
waved across the banquet-hall. It was a com- 



THE LITERARY MAN 181 

mon remark among the eminent authors, 
artists, and pubHshers assembled that it Is a 
fine thing to have a President who is so human, 
so warm in his sympathies, so keen and dis- 
criminating in his understanding of all hu- 
man endeavour." 

Mr. Roosevelt is not only a producer of 
literature, he is an appreciator of it as well. 
He goes out of his way to make friends with 
men and women who write books that please 
him. Many such have been guests at the 
White House, from Mr. Finley P. Dunne, the 
author of the "Dooley" papers, to the Rev. 
Dr. Lyman Abbott, who produces literature 
of a somewhat different type. Mr. James B. 
Connolly, author of vigorous sea tales, has 
been among his guests. Mr. Connolly enlisted 
in the navy as a yeoman, in 1906, for the pur- 
pose of glorifying the American seaman in 
realistic fiction. He took this step largely 
through the President's influence. Mr. Ed- 
ward Arlington Robinson's volume of poems, 
"Children of the Night," pleased him so much 



182 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

that he wrote a review of it for the Outlook, 
and he has taken pains to commend the short 
stories of Mr. Percival Gibbon. When he 
was receiving a company of delegates to a 
convention of hardware jobbers, he quickly 
recognised among them Colonel J. R. Nut- 
ting, of Davenport, Iowa, although he had 
seen him but once before, and that for only a 
few minutes. 

"Hello, Colonel, I'm glad to see you," said 
the President. "How are all my old friends in 
Davenport, and especially how is Miss 
French?* Tell her I read all she writes." 

It is not fiction alone that interests him, 
for he astonished a company of delegates to 
the conventions of the American Philological 
Association and the Archaeological Institute 
of America in January, 1907, by saying to 
them : 

"I have been very much interested recently 
in reading Victor Berard's work on the Phoeni- 
cians and the Odyssey; and this Association, 
*Octave Thanet. 



THE LITERARY MAN 183 

apart even from the actual work it does, in- 
directly accomplishes much more by stimulat- 
ing, encouraging, and producing the kind of 
scholarship which will here and there produce 
the work of a Victor Berard in our country." 
Out of his wide reading and deep thinking 
there has come an intellectual attitude and a 
literary style that rests on the foundations of 
the best that has been said and done. An in- 
teresting and significant commentary on that 
st3^1e and that state of mind was made by Mr. 
R. J. Walker, of St. Paul's School, West Ken- 
sington, in a letter to the London Times com- 
menting on the President's inaugural address 
of March 4, 1905. Mr. Walker wrote: "May 
I crave space to call attention to the extraordi- 
nary resemblance In spirit between President 
Roosevelt's inaugural oration and the speeches 
of Pericles in the second book of Thucydides '? 
I doubt whether there is a sentence in the 
English which cannot be paralleled in the 
Greek, as regards meaning at least, and 
often as regards form. I set to-day a section 



184. THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

of the oration for translation into Greek 
prose, and I asked our head form, 'Where does 
this EngHsh come from?' The general an- 
swer was, 'From Jowett's translation of 
Thucjdides !' " 



IX 

THE MILITARY MAN 



Mr. Roosevelt has said that the reason he 
did not accept the command of the regiment 
of Rough Riders which was organised in 
1898 to engage in the war with Spain, was 
that he "was entirely inexperienced in miHtary 
work." Then he explained that he did not 
know how to get the regiment equipped most 
rapidly, and he would have lost valuable time 
learning. But he was not entirely ignorant of 
military affairs. He enlisted in the Eighth 
Regiment of the National Guard of the State 
of New York in 1884 and served four years. 
Part of the time he was captain of a company. 
Now, no man can serve four years in the New 
York militia and command a company in it 
without knowing something of the theory and 
practice of arms. 
Mr. Roosevelt had passed through the 



186 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

training school of the citizen soldier, and was 
a member of the theoretical reserve from 
which the friends of the National Guard like 
to think the commanders of companies and 
regiments of volunteers will be selected, if 
there should ever be need of raising a large 
army for national defence. It was the natural 
and the expected thing that a graduated Na- 
tional Guard officer should be one of the com- 
manders of a regiment of volunteers in the 
Spanish War. In the early days of the Civil 
War there were brigadier-generals with less 
military training than he had. Mr. Roose- 
velt enlisted in the militia because he thought 
that was one of the duties which he owed to 
his State. 

His study of military affairs began early, as 
when he was twenty-four years old, two 
years before he enlisted, he wrote his naval 
history of the War of 1812. It was, therefore, 
not without a long-standing interest in the 
affairs of the Navy that he resigned from the 
presidency of the New York Police Board to 



THE MILITARY MAN 187 

become an Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 
But it was not so much because of his liking 
for naval affairs that he accepted the place 
as because he foresaw that there was to be 
trouble with Spain over Cuba. He had advo- 
cated intervention by the United States to put 
an end to an intolerable situation as well as to 
drive Spain from this side of the ocean. 

"Now that my party had come to power," 
he writes in "The Rough Riders," "I felt it in- 
cumbent on me, by word and deed, to do all I 
could to secure the carrying out of the policy 
in which I so heartily believed, and from the 
beginning I had determined that if a war 
came, somehow or other I was going to the 
front." 

The Assistant Secretaryship of the Navy 
presented an opportunity, not only to use his 
influence, as part of the administration, to 
bring about intervention in the affairs of 
Cuba, but to assist In the preparation to make 
that Intervention effective. He talked Inter- 
vention with everybody he could get to listen 



188 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

to him, discussed plans of campaign with 
soldiers and sailors alike, and co-operated 
with Secretary Long, his superior, in getting 
the Navy itself into shape for war. He had 
previously co-operated with Mr. Long in the 
Republican National Convention of 1884 in 
an attempt to secure the nomination of 
George F. Edmunds to the Presidency. The 
late Senator Cushman K. Davis once said of 
his work in the Navy Department, "If it had 
not been for Roosevelt we should not have been 
able to strike the blow that we did at Manila. 
It needed just Roosevelt's energy and prompt- 
ness." 

He knew that the guns of the Navy would 
be useless unless the gunners could shoot 
straight. There had been little target prac- 
tice in past years, for target practice with big 
guns is expensive. Congress, however, was 
persuaded to appropriate eight hundred thou- 
sand dollars for this purpose. Powder was 
bought with the money and distributed among 
the ships. The gunners then fired with real 



THE MILITARY MAN 189 

ammunition at leal targets. Within a month 
he was sent back before the Congressional 
Committee to ask for five hundred thousand 
dollars more. 

"Where is that eight hundred thousand 
dollars you got a little while ago.?" one of the 
committee-men asked. 

"Burned," was the laconic reply. 

The money was spent to some purpose, as 
the marksmanship of the naval gunners at 
the battle of Santiago proved. 

The deliberation with which many of the 
officials in Washington went about their busi- 
ness tried his patience. He held a subordinate 
position and, of course, had to wait on the 
pleasure of his superiors, even when they were 
not delayed by the inaction of Congress. On 
one occasion he had urged a committee of 
Congressmen to approve certain things which 
he thought should be done at once. The mem- 
bers of the committee talked and talked with- 
out reaching any conclusion. An hour passed 
and they were still talking, when Mr. Roosevelt 



190 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

sprang to his feet with considerable show of 
impatience, and said: 

"Gentlemen, if God had referred the ark to 
a committee on naval affairs like this, it's my 
opinion that it wouldn't have been built yet." 

Before war was declared it was reported that 
the Spanish fleet was about to sail for Cuba, 
and Mr. Roosevelt urged that in view of all 
the circumstances, word be sent to Spain that 
the despatch of the fleet would be regarded 
as an act of war. He had explained his views 
to President McKinley, and the President sent 
for him one day to tell the same things to the 
Cabinet. What happened was told in 1901, 
after Mr. Roosevelt had become Presi- 
dent. As he entered the room where the 
Cabinet was gathered. President McKinley 
asked him : 

"What would you advise as to the action of 
the United States in connection with Cervera's 
fleet.?" 

After pressing his lips firmly together for a 
moment, Mr. Roosevelt spoke: 



THE MILITARY MAN 191 

"With all due deference to jou, Mr. Presi- 
dent, since you ask me for my honest opinion, 
I will say that my advice is to meet Cervera 
at the Canaries and sink every ship in the 
fleet." 

"But that would be an act of war," the Presi- 
dent replied. 

"Certainly it would," admitted Mr. Roose- 
velt, "but I have noticed in my study of his- 
tory that it is the nation that gets in the first 
blow which usually wins, and I believe in get- 
ting in the first blow." 

This advice was not taken, for reasons that 
seemed to the responsible officers to be good 
and sufficient. The Spanish fleet, with its tor- 
pedo boats, sailed under command of Admiral 
Cervera. Many of the older naval officers 
advocated a policy of caution. They advised 
that the men in command of our ships should 
exercise great care and on no account get near 
enough to the torpedo boats to risk the loss of 
their own ships. There was great dread of the 
destructive power of the torpedoes in those 



19:3 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

days. Mr. Roosevelt was discussing this sit- 
uation one day with a friend. He got so 
indignant at what he regarded as the stupidity 
of the pohcy of dodging the enemy, that he 
jumped from his chair and paced up and 
down the room, shooting words from his mouth 
hke bullets from a rapid-fire gun. 

"Confound it all," he exclaimed, "of course 
we must take risks. But what is the good of a 
naval officer who would not run some risk when 
the necessity arose? Suppose a torpedo boat 
does destroy one of our ships, you may be 
sure there will be no more Spanish torpedo 
boats after that engagement is over. It is 
nonsense to talk about keeping our ships in 
port while the Spanish torpedo boats are on 
the sea. We must go out and find them and 
destroy them. And that would not be difficult, 
because I don't believe they are half so danger- 
ous as they are represented to be." 

There was a lighter side to all this hard and 
earnest work in preparation for possible war. 
Mr. Roosevelt's good digestion and high 



THE MILITARY MAN 193 

spirits still made it possible for him to enjoy 
life and to take many things less seriously. 
He liked to play pranks upon his associates. 
On one occasion he accompanied a squadron 
that went out for two days' target practice, 
to shoot away some of the powder that he had 
persuaded Congress to permit the Navy De- 
partment to buy. When the squadron was 
about to return, the officers were invited on 
board the flag-ship as the guests of Mr. 
Roosevelt. They talked for some time, as 
the story is told, and as no creature com- 
forts appeared they began to look inquiringly 
at one another. Mr. Roosevelt understood the 
glances, and, without the flicker of a smile, 
he said: 

"Will you step into the cabin, gentlemen, 
and have some tea.?" 

The officers knew that strong waters were 
forbidden on board ship, but they also knew 
that an appetizer by any other name would 
sit as well on the stomach. So the movement 
toward the cabin was prompt and unanimous. 



194 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

There, in the centre of a great table, rested a 
punch-bowl of magnificent proportions, filled 
nearly to the brim with a liquid a shade darker 
than amber. In its centre floated an island of 
ice. Sprays of mint extended their slender 
leaves over its brim, and pieces of lemon and 
other fruits floated on the surface of the cool 
and tempting liquid. 

The old commodore, with the colour of the 
sun on his face and the dryness of the desert 
in his throat, turned eagerly toward this oasis. 
He stirred the ladle lovingly in the bowl while 
the others gathered about him. He held his 
glass, filled to the brim, between his eye and 
the sunlight that came in through the cabin 
window, and the clatter and clink of glasses 
sounded cheerfully as each officer filled to the 
occasion. With an air of contentment and 
anticipatory joy the commodore brought the 
glass to his lips. Then as all lifted their 
glasses to follow his example, a look of aston- 
ishment passed over his face, giving way to 
one of pain. 



THE MILITARY MAN 195 

"I'll be blowed if it ain't tea !" he gasped. 

And the regulations were still intact. 

These officers and Mr. Roosevelt and every 
other close observer of the signs of the times 
knew when the Maine was blown up in Havana 
harbour that war could not be delayed much 
longer. And Mr. Roosevelt began to lay his 
plans to get into it. He might have gone as 
a staff officer, but he did not care for that kind 
of duty. He sought to go as a field officer under 
General Francis V. Greene, but there were no 
vacancies. It was not until Congress author- 
ised the organisation of three cavalry regi- 
ments from among the frontiersmen and cow- 
boys of the West that he found a way to go. 

Secretary Alger, of the War Department, 
offered to make him a colonel of one of them, 
but, as already intimated, he did not think he 
had sufficient experience in equipping a regi- 
ment for the field to take command at once. 
His friend, Leonard Wood, now major-gen- 
eral, was made colonel, and he accepted second 
place. 



196 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

After he had decided to resign there were 
still some matters to be arranged in the Navy 
Department before it was announced that he 
was to go. But the newspaper men heard a 
rumour of his intentions, and one of them 
went, after midnight, to verify the report at 
the home of his brother-in-law. Commander 
Cowles, where he was staying. The man knew 
Mr. Roosevelt personally, and thought that on 
the strength of the acquaintance he might be 
able to get some information. He discovered 
that however impulsive the Assistant Secre- 
tary of the Navy might seem, there were some 
things he could not be surprised into saying. 
The newspaper man said afterward : 

"I stepped briskly up the steps and rang the 
bell. The house was very dark, every blind 
drawn and not a ray anywhere. Again I 
rang, but no sound. Determined not to be 
bluffed, I rang the bell once more and soon 
heard footsteps above. The window-sash went 
up and Mr. Roosevelt leaned out and wanted 
to know what I wanted. 



THE MILITARY MAN 197 

" 'Good-evening, i\Ir. Roosevelt,' said I, 'this 
is . Is it true that ' 

" 'Why, Mr. ,' he interrupted, 'I am 

surprised.' 

" 'So am I, Mr. Roosevelt, but it is an im- 
portant matter and I'll explain later. I would 
like to know if ' 

" 'Why, Mr. , I am surprised.' 

" 'I appreciate that fact,' I persisted, 'but 
it is exceedingly important to know the exact 
facts. Is it true that ' 

" 'Why, Mr. ,' broke in the cold, calm 

voice, 'I am very much surprised,' and down 
went the sash and back to bed went Mr. Roose- 
velt. It was a cold dash and it took me some 
time to recover from the shock ; but Mr. 
Roosevelt explained later that he had had a 
particular anxiety not to have the story ap- 
pear that day." 

But his purpose soon became generally 
known, and then there was raised probably the 
most remarkable regiment that was ever en- 
listed for any war. There were millionaires in 



198 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

it and men who owned nothing; college grad- 
uates and men whose only schooling had been 
in the school of life ; men with social graces 
and experience and men who did not know the 
difference between a demi tasse and a demi- 
john; but if they discovered the difference, 
would prefer the demijohn. But the men were 
all alike in that they were brave, adventurous 
spirits. 

Not onl}^ was the regiment itself unique, but 
the efforts made by Colonel Wood and Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Roosevelt to get it equipped 
and drilled and ordered to the front, and then 
the expedients to which they resorted to make 
it possible to obey the order that they had re- 
ceived, make one of the most remarkable series 
of incidents in the history of the volunteer 
soldier. 

The War Department was ill prepared for 
the war, and the regiments, which were anx- 
ious to get their equipment without delay, had 
to look out for themselves or be neglected. 
Through the zeal of its two commanding offi- 



THE MILITARY MAN 199 

cers, the Rough Riders got Krag-Jorgensen 
rifles, so that they might be assigned to duty 
with the regular army. Through their energy 
they were in condition to be sent to the front 
before either of the other volunteer cavalry 
regiments. But it was only after the most 
strenuous exertions that they succeeded in 
getting ordered to the rendezvous in Florida. 
]Mr. Roosevelt sent telegrams day after day, 
beseeching all the men in authority that he 
could think of, to get his men into service as 
soon as possible. Finally, after much exer- 
tion, the command to go to Florida was ex- 
tracted from the War Department. So eager 
were they to get off that when they got to 
Tampa and received the command to embark 
on a transport at Port Tampa, nine miles 
awa}^, Mr. Roosevelt seized a train of empty 
coal cars, loaded his men into them and forced 
the engineer to run them down to the pier 
at which the transport was to be moored. In 
the meantime. Colonel Wood was getting the 
transport up to the pier. Mr. Roosevelt 



200 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

learned accidentally that two other regiments 
were ordered to go on the same boat, one of 
which contained more men than the transport 
could carry. He ran at full speed back to his 
train, left a strong guard to take care of the 
baggage, and marched the rest of the regiment 
at double quick to the point where the trans- 
port landed, getting there just in time to 
scramble aboard before the other regiments 
arrived. He had set out for the front to see 
fighting, and he was not going to be left be- 
hind if alertness could accomplish anything. 
During all the weeks of active preparation 
for this embarkation Mr. Roosevelt found 
time to read various things. He says that "to 
occupy my spare moments" he read M. Demo- 
lin's "Superiorite des Anglo-Saxons," in the 
course of which the author says that the mili- 
tarism of Latin Europe has a tendency to 
deaden the power of individual initiative. The 
success of the Rough Riders in getting to 
Cuba in the face of great obstacles was proof, 
in Mr. Roosevelt's opinion, that "militarism" 



THE MILITARY MAN 201 

in the United States had not deadened indi- 
vidual initiative — in the American volunteer, 
at any rate. 

Instead of waiting for specific orders to disem- 
bark after the transport arrived off Santiago, 
the pilot of one of the naval vessels there was 
secured to take the troop ship to within a 
hundred yards of land ; the men were carried 
off in boats, and the officers' horses were 
thrown overboard to swim ashore. They had 
not been on land many hours before the march 
to the front began. It has been said that 
the regiment passed the extreme outpost 
without orders, and consequently got into the 
fight at Las Guasimas the next morning when 
no fight was planned. When General Shafter 
heard the news of the engagement, it was in the 
form of a report that the regiment had been 
cut to pieces. But a few hours later he re- 
ceived a correct report of the engagement 
and sent a note to Lieutenant-Colonel Roose- 
velt congratulating him on the brilliant suc- 
cess of the attack. 



203 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Colonel Wood was promoted to a vacant 
brigadier-generalship on July 9, 1898, be- 
cause he was the senior colonel on the field, 
and the lieutenant-colonel became colonel, 
and commanded the regiment from a short 
time after the battle of San Juan Hill till it 
was mustered out at Montauk Point. 

The Rough Riders did themselves credit in 
Cuba, but their part in the campaign which 
ended with the fall of Santiago was small, as 
the part of any single regiment was bound 
to be. The interest which the regiment 
aroused throughout the country was due more 
to its romantic composition and history than 
to its brilliant achievements, though its record 
is an honourable one. Mr. Roosevelt placed 
it properly in history when he dedicated his 
entertaining tale of its career in these words : 
"On behalf of the Rough Riders I dedicate 
this book to the officers and men of the five 
regular regiments which, together with mine, 
made up the cavalry division at Santiago." 
It was only a sixth of the cavalry division, 



THE MILITARY MAN 203 

the regulars in which did the most difficult 
work. 

The men who fought together, and suffered 
privations together afterward, through the 
breaking down of the War Department, are 
bound together by a freemasonry whose Initia- 
tory ritual was read to the sound of bullets 
at Las Guasimas, and when two of them meet 
all other men must wait their pleasure. Refer- 
ence has been made in a previous chapter to 
Mr. Roosevelt's presence at a reunion of the 
regiment, when he w^as Governor of New 
York. The men met as old friends who had 
faced death together, and Mr. Roosevelt has 
consistently acted as though he felt that every 
soldier, private or officer, who fought under 
him was entitled to his special consideration. 

One of them confessed to him while he was 
Governor that he had killed a man in self-de- 
fence, and unless he could hire a good lawyer 
would probably be convicted. Mr. Roosevelt, 
willing that the man should have his case fairly 
presented in court, offered to let him have 



204 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

money for counsel fees when it was needed. 
Months passed and no appeal for money came. 
Finally the Governor wrote, asking how mat- 
ters stood. Soon this reply came back, at 
which he laughed with a hearty appreciation 
of frontier conditions : "Don't need the money 
now. We have elected a Republican District 
Attorney." 

Senator Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, once 
discovered another phase of the loyalty of the 
Rough Riders to one another when he called 
at the White House to see the President. He 
was told that Mr. Roosevelt was engaged. 

"Who's there?" he asked of the doorkeeper. 

"Somebody who was in the Rough Riders," 
was the reply. 

"Oh, well," the Senator remarked, smiling, 
as he turned away, "what chance has a mere 
Senator.?" 

On another occasion Senator Bard, of Cali- 
fornia, took a constituent to see the President. 
The man was one of the members of the 
famous regiment. 



THE MILITARY MAN 205 

"Mr. President," the Senator began, "I want 
to present to you my friend " 

"Why, hello, Jim!" the President almost 
shouted. "How are you.^" And he grasped 
the man's hand with his usual firm and hearty 
grip. 

Then they talked together for ten minutes 
or more. Senator Bard apparently forgotten. 
As the men were leaving, the President called 
out: 

"By the way, Jim, come up to dinner to- 
night, just as you are." Then he added, as if 
by afterthought, "And be sure to bring Bard 
with you." 

Through all of his military career there ap- 
pears evidence of his well-grounded democracy 
as well as of his strenuosity. And as com- 
mander-in-chief of the land and naval forces 
of the nation, he is now in hearty sympathy 
with all men who are striving to better the 
service. When his attention was called to the 
criticisms made by an officer attached to the 
squadron In the Far East he remarked: 



206 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"The only trouble with this man is that he 
thinks our Navy is a few laps behind the 
Turk's. Leave him alone. Just so long as we 
have the service of such a kicker the Turks 
will never get ahead of us." 



THE POLITICAL MAN 



"I HAVE always believed," said Mr. Roose- 
velt some years ago, "that every man should 
join a political organisation and should attend 
the primaries ; that he should not be content to 
be merely governed, but should do his part of 
the work. So, after leaving college I went to 
the local political headquarters, attended all 
the meetings, and took my part in whatever 
came up. There arose a revolt against the 
Member of Assembly from that district, and 
I was nominated to succeed him and was 
elected." 

On another occasion, when he was explain- 
ing why he continued to act with his party 
when he had worked hard to prevent the nomi- 
nation of James G. Blaine, the Presidential 
candidate who won in the convention of 
,1884, he said: "Whatever good I have accom- 



208 THE MANY-SIDED. ROOSEVELT 

plished has been through the Republican 
party." 

Mr. Roosevelt is a party man, because he 
believes in using the tools ready to his hand. 
But he has always striven to make his party an 
efficient instrument by exerting his influence 
to lead it to indorse the policies which he 
favours. On manj^ occasions he has declared 
that he believes in accepting a partial good 
rather than bolting his party when the com- 
plete good cannot be obtained at once. He 
has no patience with reformers who refuse to 
work with an old political organisation when 
that organisation is supporting the things in 
which the reformers believe. 

"Let's take what we can get now, and then 
when we can get more, let's take that," has 
been his advice. 

He became an office-holder in the first place 
because he thought it was his duty, as noted 
in a previous chapter. The nomination to the 
New York Assembly came to him when he was 
twenty-three years old, the year after he left 



THE POLITICAL MAN 209 

college. He was not taken seriously at first 
b}^ the older men in the State Legislature. 
They thought that he was a young enthusiast 
who would not do an3^thing but talk. But 
they soon found that he was a force to be 
reckoned with. The second year in Albany 
found him a candidate for the Speakership 
of the Assembly, and he received twenty-nine 
votes out of seventy in the Republican caucus. 
He was made chairman of the Cities Commit- 
tee in his third term. And he had risen to 
such a commanding position in his party that 
he was made one of the four delegates-at-large 
from New York to the Republican National 
Convention in 1884. 

The State Convention at which the delegates 
were elected was held in Utica on April 23d. 
The friends of President Arthur hoped to se- 
cure the four delegates ; while the friends of 
James G. Blaine and George F. Edmunds each 
hoped to capture the delegation. Mr. Roose- 
velt supported Edmunds, with Senator Joseph 
R. Hawley as his second choice. On the even- 



210 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

ing before the convention met he called on 
Mr. Warner Miller, one of the Blaine leaders, 
in company with Congressman James W. 
Wadsworth, and told Mr. Miller that while he 
favoured Mr. Edmunds, he was unalterably 
opposed to the nomination of President 
Arthur. The Blaine men, however, objected 
to sending him as a delegate, not only be- 
cause he opposed Blaine, but because he then 
had leanings toward free trade. The Arthur 
delegates attempted to compromise with the 
Blaine delegates on the election of Henry 
Ward Beecher and Philip Becker, Arthur men, 
and Warner Miller and Whitelaw Reid, Blaine 
men, but they failed. A coalition, however, 
was effected between the Edmunds and the 
Arthur delegates, and they succeeded in elect- 
ing Mr. Roosevelt, Andrew D. White, John 
I. Gilbert, and Edwin Packard. All but Mr. 
White were pronounced Edmunds men. As 
there were not many Edmunds delegates in the 
convention, there was much talk about the tail 
wagging the dog. Mr. Roosevelt, who had 



THE POLITICAL MAN 211 

been applauded heartily whenever he spoke, 
was one of the most popular leaders in the 
convention. His vote for delegate-at-large 
was a fair measure of the favour in which he 
was held. He received 472 votes, w^hereas Mr. 
White received 407, Mr. Gilbert 34S, and Mr. 
Packard only 256. It was a notable personal 
triumph. His own views of that triumph have 
been set forth in the interesting letter to the 
Honourable S. N. D. North, which appears in 
a previous chapter. The comment of the spe- 
cial correspondent of the New York Tribune 
who reported the proceedings of the conven- 
tion is almost as interesting. He wrote: 

"Mr. Roosevelt was the active man in the so- 
called Edmunds group, and the most amusing 
thing in the whole business was the sudden 
affection shown for Roosevelt by George 
Bliss, Robert G. McCord, Michael Cregan, 
John J. O'Brien, and other New York men 
who have heretofore spoken of him in a most 
contemptuous manner." 

He was called to the platform to make a 



212 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

speech after the result of the voting was an- 
nounced, and said: 

"Gentlemen : I have nothing to say to you 
further than to thank you heartily for 
the honour you have conferred upon me in 
electing me as a delegate-at-large from the 
great Empire State to Chicago. I shall try 
to so behave myself as best to subserve the in- 
terests of the Republican party and to make 
you feel no regret at the course you have 
taken in sending me." [Tremendous ap- 
plause.] 

When the Edmunds delegates got together 
in Chicago on the eve of the National Con- 
vention beginning on June 3d, Mr. Roosevelt 
made another speech, in the course of which he 
said that much fault had been found because 
at the Utica convention the tail had wagged 
the dog. It was admitted that it was com- 
mendable of the tail, but it had killed the dog. 
At the present convention he said the tail pro- 
posed to wag two dogs. 

A test of strength came on the election of a 



THE POLITICAL MAN 213 

temporary chairman, when the Edmunds men 
threw their strength to John R. Lynch, of 
Mississippi, a negro. Lynch was elected and 
Mr. Roosevelt then said: 

"Arthur is a dead candidate as a result of 
that vote and we have checked Blaine. Mr. 
Lodge [Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachu- 
setts] and myself worked all night to accom- 
plish that result. We feel greatly gratified. 
It will be a long convention, and either Ed- 
munds, Hawley, Harrison, or Sherman will 
be nominated." 

The next day he admitted that Blaine was 
"so far ahead that he is dangerous," and when 
Blaine was finally nominated, he was bitterly 
disappointed. At first he refused to make any 
comment on the result, but when urged he said : 

"There are scores of people in my Assembly 
District in New York who desired the nomina- 
tion of Mr. Blaine ; but I regard the nomina- 
tion of Mr. Blaine as the result of mistaken 
popular enthusiasm." 

He was almost immediately approached by 



214 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

some of the anti-Blaine leaders who desired 
him to assist in putting an independent ticket 
in the field; but he declined to entertain the 
proposition, and later took the stump for 
Blaine. 

It was about this time that Roscoe Conkling 
spoke of him as "that dentificial young man 
with more teeth than brains." But other ob- 
servers held different opinions. One of them 
was Mr. Andrew D. White, who, before he 
was sent to Chicago as Mr. Roosevelt's col- 
league, said of him in his classroom at Cornell 
University : 

"Young gentlemen, some of you may enter 
public life. I call your attention to Theodore 
Roosevelt, now in our Legislature. He is on 
the right road to success. It is dangerous to 
predict a future for a young man, but let me 
say that if any man of his age was ever 
pointed straight for the Presidency, that man 
is Theodore Roosevelt." 

Another of these prophetic observers was 
Baron Speck von Sternburg, now German 



THE POLITICAL MAN 215 

Ambassador in Washington, who first became 
acquainted with Mr. Roosevelt when the latter 
was a member of the National Civil Service 
Commission. The Baron once said to some 
friends soon after he came back to this coun- 
try from a leave of absence: 

"As I return to America as German Ambas- 
sador I am reminded of the changes that have 
taken place since I was here nearly twenty 
years ago as a military attache. Then, your 
President was a Civil Service Commissioner. 
I do not pose as a prophet, but when I first 
met Mr. Roosevelt I was deeply impressed with 
his powerful personality, his untiring energy, 
and essential sincerity of purpose. It was this 
combination which convinced me that some 
day I should see him at the head of this great 
nation. When I congratulated him on his ap- 
pointment as Police Commissioner in New 
York I added : 

" 'When I again congratulate you, Mr. 
Roosevelt, you will be one step nearer the 
White House.' 



916 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"On hearing of his appointment as Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy, I wrote him from Pe- 
king: 

" 'Permit me to congratulate you on this 
second step nearer the Presidency.' 

"When he was elected Governor of New York 
I telegraphed him : 

" 'The next time I offer congratulations it 
w ill be to President Roosevelt.' 

"I felt sure he would be President, because I 
knew the stuff he was made of. To me, and 
the same opinion prevails in Europe, your 
President is the personification of what is good 
and great in America." 

Benjamin Harrison, who as President ap- 
pointed Mr. Roosevelt to the Civil Service 
Commission, wrote in 1898: * "Careful, pains- 
taking, and vigorous, Mr. Roosevelt is to-day 
one of tlic best examples of Presidential tim- 
ber in the country. Pie seems to stand out 
among his fellow-citizens as an example 
* Success, November, 1901. 



THE POLITICAL MAN 217 

worthy of their consideration, and although he 
is too young to rank as a statesman, he has, 
nevertheless, the qualities that will ultimately 
make him a statesman. Should Mr. Roosevelt 
aspire to become President of the United 
States, I believe that he will ultimately be suc- 
cessful. First, because he has the courage 
requisite; and, secondly, the character. His 
varied life as ranchman, hunter, soldier, and 
politician has placed him in such close proxim- 
ity with so many different men that they have 
had ample opportunity to judge of his quali- 
ties, and to understand when he says or does 
a thing." 

As appears from the letter on his expectation 
to devote himself to literature, quoted in an- 
other chapter, he did not share the confidence 
of his friends in his own future. The men 
who get on in politics commonly use different 
methods, and for a time he thought that suc- 
cess could be won only by adopting their 
methods. He preferred unofficial station to 
public life under such conditions. He has 



218 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

usually been willing to respond, however, when 
his party has called. He responded when 
asked to work for the election of Blaine in 
1884 ; and when he was requested to accept the 
regular Republican nomination for Mayor of 
New York, to run against Abram S. Hewitt, 
the Tammany candidate, and Henry George, 
the candidate of the labour party, he con- 
sented, and went down to defeat with a smiling 
face. 

His next public service was in Washington, 
to which he was called by President Harrison. 
"In 1889, when the Civil Service Commission 
was in need of improvement, I found the neces- 
sity of having a business man in the commis- 
sion rather than a politician," said Mr. Har- 
rison in the article from which an extract has 
already been made. "Several hundred names 
were presented, and I laid them aside and 
sought out Mr. Roosevelt. He seemed to 
have the combined elements of a politician and 
a business man — qualities that are much 
needed in men who aspire to public office. It 



THE POLITICAL MAN 219 

was with reluctance that Mr. Roosevelt took 
the position ; but as soon as he entered the 
Commission he began to work with so much de- 
termination and completeness that I felt I had 
secured the right man. He devoted his 
energies and determined aggressiveness to the 
work, with good results. In the six years of 
his tenure of office, the civil service was ex- 
tended from controlling twelve thousand until 
forty thousand public servants were made sub- 
ject to its provisions." 

The earnestness with which Mr. Roosevelt 
worked in those years has been described 
by Mr. John Fletcher Lacey, who was then, 
and still is, representing an Iowa district in 
Congress. A few days after Mr. Lacey 
took his seat in the Fifty-first Congress he 
met the late Thomas B. Reed in one of the 
cloak-rooms of the Capitol, studying a map 
of the United States. Mr. Lacey good 
humouredly asked him if he were figuring out 
the size of his majority as Speaker. Accord- 
ing to the lowan, Mr. Reed replied: 



220 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"No. A young constituent of mine who has 
just failed in a civil service examination 
claims that a competitor passed safely by brib- 
ing the examiners to give him a list of the 
questions in advance. I didn't believe my 
young friend, and have sent him to the head- 
quarters of the Civil Service Commission to 
tell his story there. While awaiting his re- 
turn I have been figuring out on this map that 
if, sa}^, Columbus, Ohio, represented one hun- 
dred per cent, in a civil service table of mark- 
ings, my constituent would come out some- 
where about Jamaica, Long Island." 

"I was amused," said Mr. Lacey, "by Reed's 
quaint way of stating his belief in his con- 
stituent's inability to pass the examination. 
While we were discussing the subject of civil 
service regulations in a general way in walked 
the young man who had failed and gone 
to unburden his conviction to the Civil Service 
Commission that a rival had been successful 
through connivance with an agent of the 
Commission." 



THE POLITICAL MAN 221 

"Well, what happened when you told your 
story?" Reed asked. 

"Why," faltered the youth, "a very em- 
phatic fellow in charge there whipped out one 
hundred dollars in bills, laid them across his 
knee and exclaimed: 'I'll pay you one hun- 
dred dollars, young man, if you can prove that 
a single syllable of what you say of corrup- 
tion is true.' That is all the satisfaction I 
got." 

"And that is all you deserve," Reed 
added. 

"Then he turned to me," said Mr. Lacey, 
"and remarked, 'We've got an American of 
blood and iron — a coming man — on the Civil 
Service Commission. I tell 3^ou, Lacey, you 
want to watch that Civil Service Commis- 
sioner, for he's a New World Bismarck and 
Cromwell combined. He'll be President some 
day.' 

" 'What's his name ?' I asked. 

" 'Theodore Roosevelt,' replied Reed. 

"Of course I had heard vaguely of Roosevelt, 



222 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

but never having had occasion to meet him 
I had formed no definite opinion of him. 
Reed's characterisation aroused in me the 
greatest curiosity to see Roosevelt. The next 
day I called and introduced myself, and took 
the liberty to repeat what the young man had 
brought back about the one hundred dollar 
guarantee that no turpitude on the part of the 
examiner in question existed. 

" 'I have resolved to purify the civil ser- 
vice system,' was Mr. Roosevelt's reply, 'and to 
that end have placed in charge men whom I 
trust with my whole heart, and I stand ready, 
therefore, to pledge my fortune and my hon- 
our to the sac redness with which they respect 
the trust I repose in them.' " 

Mr. Roosevelt was willing to back not only 
the integrity of his subordinates but the fair- 
ness of his examinations as well. It has been 
the favourite charge of the opponents of the 
merit system that the examinations did not 
test the ability of the candidates for the duties 
which they aspired to perform. Mr. Roosevelt 



THE POLITICAL MAN 223 

had to meet this charge once before a commit- 
tee, and he frankly admitted that some of the 
questions asked were intended only to discover 
something about the general intelligence of the 
candidates. 

"Not long ago," he said, "we asked who Lin- 
coln was, and the answers that we got were 
various. We were told that he was a Revo- 
lutionary general, that he was assassinated by 
Thomas Jefferson, that he assassinated Aaron 
Burr, that he commanded a regiment in the 
French and Indian War, and that he was an 
Arctic explorer." 

He insisted, however, that all examinations 
should be practical, so far as possible. When 
it was decided to put the government inspec- 
tors along the Rio Grande in the classified 
service, it became necessary to prepare ques- 
tions for the examinations. As these men were 
to prevent outlaws from running cattle across 
the border into Mexico, it was important that 
they should be first-class horsemen, familiar 
with handling cattle, and that they should also 



224 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

be acquainted with the various brands of cattle 
on the Texas frontier ranges. In short, men 
of experience in frontier Hfe were needed. 
Some subordinates drafted a lot of questions in 
history, rhetoric, and mathematics for the 
candidates to answer. Mr. Roosevelt knew 
something about the West and was aware that 
while men who could answer these questions 
might make good inspectors, the men who 
could be got to serve as inspectors could 
not answer the questions, and that whether 
they could or not was immaterial. He there- 
upon drew up a new examination paper. 
The only test of scholarship was the require- 
ment that the candidates should answer the 
questions in their own language and in their 
own handwriting. 

The men were asked, among other things, 
to "state the experience, if an}^, you have had 
as a marksman with a rifle or a pistol ; whether 
or not you have practised shooting at a target 
with either weapon, or at game or other mov- 
ing ob j ects ; and also whether you have prac- 



THE POLITICAL MAN 225 

tised shooting on horseback. State the make 
of the rifle or revolver you use." 

This was intensely practical and was in- 
tended to disclose the kind of information 
needed in guiding the selection of -inspectors. 
A second question was similar to the first: 
"State fully what experience you have had 
in horsemanship ; whether or not you can ride 
unbroken horses ; if not, whether you would be 
able, unassisted, to rope, bridle, saddle, mount, 
and ride an ordinary cow pony after it had 
been turned loose for six months ; also, whether 
you can ride an ordinary cow pony on the 
round-up, both in circle riding and in cutting- 
out work around the herd." 

Another question was framed so as to test 
the applicants' knowledge of the different 
brands of cattle in the cattle country. When 
Mr. Roosevelt submitted the paper to his col- 
leagues, he declared that to be a successful 
government inspector and shoot lawless Mexi- 
cans who were trying to run the cattle over 
the border, it was not necessary for a man to 



2-26 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

discuss the nebular hypothesis, nor to have 
an intimate knowledge of the name and num- 
ber of inhabitants of the capital of Zanzibar. 

Because he was a practical civil service re- 
former and did not "play politics," he was 
kept in office by President Cleveland, expe- 
riencing in his own person the benefits of the 
merit system. After he had been in the com- 
mission six years, he concluded that his work 
there was finished. The merit system was so 
firmly established that no one dared propose 
to return to the old spoils sj^stem of the dis' 
tribution of the patronage among the success- 
ful party w^orkers ; and the examinations to 
test the fitness of the applicants had been made 
so practical that no capable man could fail to 
pass them. 

Then came the opportunity to struggle with 
the police problem in New York City. He 
resigned his Civil Service Commissionership 
and accepted the presidency of the Board of 
Police Commissioners under Mayor Strong.; 
He applied the merit system to promotions and 



THE POLITICAL MAN 227 

put an end to the old practice of advancing 
favourites and keeping down good men if 
they did not have influence with pohticians. 
The effect of this on the force was wonderful. 
The honest men, and they were largely in the 
majority, took heart and went about their 
work with greater confidence in the righteous- 
ness of things than they had ever had before. 
The favourites of the old regime, however, 
attacked the new Commissioner, and talked 
about the demoralisation among the people 
arising from the enforcement of the new regu- 
lations, which required the policemen to treat 
all citizens alike, without partiality for the 
liquor-sellers or gamblers. There was de- 
moralisation, it is true, but it was chiefly those 
who had been buying privileges to violate 
the law that were demoralised. When influen- 
tial citizens, who had heard the protests of the 
vicious against the enforcement of the laws 
regulating liquor-selling, began to be afraid 
lest business should suff'er, and went to him 
and suggested that it was not wise to bring 



22S THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

about this new order of things, his answer 
was uniformly the same: 

"I am placed here to enforce the law as I 
find it. I shall enforce it. If you don't like 
the law, repeal it." 

This was a practical application of General 
Grant's dictum that the best way to secure the 
repeal of an improper law is to enforce it. 
But the people of New York have not yet been 
able to secure the repeal of the statutes which 
the new Police Commissioner insisted should be 
obeyed. New statutes have been passed and 
new conditions created, but the situation is 
practically unchanged. In his conversation 
with Mr. Eggleston in the spring of 1902 the 
subject was referred to, and Mr. Eggleston 
told the President that he was the author of 
the situation which then existed. 

"How is that.?" Mr. Roosevelt asked. 

"Wh3', it was you who first demonstrated the 
fact that it is possible for an honest police ad- 
ministration to compel the police to honest 
ways," Mr. Eggleston replied. "You thus 



THE POLITICAL MAN 229 

created a popular demand for honest police 
administration which will not down at any 
man's behest." 

Then Mr. Eggleston, at his request, briefly 
described the conditions, and after some mo- 
ments' thought Mr. Roosevelt said : 

"The difficulty seems to be inherent in the 
conditions. If a reform administration hon- 
estly endeavours to carry out reform, it makes 
an end of itself at the end of its term and in- 
sures the return of Tammany to power. If a 
reform administration fails or falters in carry- 
ing out the pledges of reform on which it was 
elected, it utterly loses the confidence and sup- 
port of the reform forces, and that again 
means a triumph for Tammany at the next 
election." 

"What, then, is to be done.?" asked Mr. Eg- 
gleston. 

"Enforce the law and take the conse- 
quences," he quickly answered. "The police 
force is composed mainly of good men, 
who have no love for crookedness. They 



230 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

need only know that an honest discharge 
of duty is required of them in order to 
insure conduct of that character on their 
part." 

As Police Commissioner Mr. Roosevelt not 
only strove to enforce the law against the 
powerful liquor-sellers, and against the com- 
bination of powerful politicians which sup- 
ported them, but he was equally determined 
that there should be no violation of the law in 
the name of liberty during labour strikes. 
The labouring men are under as great obli- 
gations to refrain from violence as the saloon- 
keepers are to refrain from selling liquor 
during the prohibited hours. He told them so, 
too, w^hen they struck and there were pros- 
pects of rioting in the streets. He went before 
a company of the men and their leaders and 
said to them : 

"Gentlemen, I have come to get your point 
of view and see if we cannot agree to help 
each other out. But we want to make it clear 
to ourselves at the start that the greatest dam- 



THE POLITICAL MAN 231 

age any man can do to his cause is to counsel 
violence." 

Then, with an emphasis the significance of 
which there was no mistaking, he continued: 

"Order must be maintained; and make no 
mistake, I w^ill maintain it." 

The labour men had thought at first that 
they were to meet an ordinary politician who 
proposed to "conciliate the labour vote," but 
before he was through with them they dis- 
covered that his method of conciliation was 
unusual. They respected him for his stand, 
however, for the great majority of the labour- 
ing men are honest and fair-minded. 

Mr. Roosevelt went from the Police Board to 
the Navy Department and from the Navy De- 
partment to the volunteer army in Cuba. 
After his return from Cuba the politicians de- 
sired to profit by his popularity, both the 
politicians in his regular party organisation 
and the independents as well. The latter 
sought to persuade him to accept a nomination 
for the Governorship of New York from them 



232 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

before the regular organisation had a chance 
to nominate him. They did not know the 
man. He had not been in the habit of doing 
things that way. He did not propose to be the 
candidate of merely a few people who were 
unable to work in harmony with a majority 
of their party. Such a candidacy might be 
amusing, but it would lead nowhere. With 
consummate skill he prevented the indepen- 
dents from complicating the situation, and 
then accepted the regular Republican nomina- 
tion when it came to him. And he was elected 
when it was believed that no other candidate 
could have saved his party from defeat. 

He not only prevented the reformers, as they 
pleased to call themselves, from defeating their 
own purposes in the campaign for his election, 
but when he took his seat in the State Capitol 
in Albany, he prevented the regular politicians 
from using their accustomed tactics. The 
head of one of the State departments seemed 
to think that the department was maintained 
to further his own political ambitions, and he 



I 



THE POLITICAL MAN 233 

used it for those ends. Mr. Roosevelt did not 
think government was carried on for such pur- 
poses and he sent for the man. When the 
official reached the executive chamber, they 
say the Governor read him a lecture about the 
duty of public officials which he will long 
remember, and ended it by shaking his finger 
in the man's face and snapping out at him : 

"Now, if you don't stop playing politics in 
your office I will pretty soon know the reason 
why." 

The man was surprised, to say the least ; but 
he paid more attention to his public duties 
thereafter. 

The political effect of Mr. Roosevelt's actions, 
if he believed that he was acting for the gen- 
eral good, did not seem to trouble him much. 
He seconded the efforts of the Democratic Con- 
troller of New York City to secure the passage 
of bills to prevent the waste of the city's funds. 
The Corporation Counsel had been in the 
habit of confessing judgment in suits against 
the city when he thought best, without con- 



234 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

suiting the financial officers or any one else. 
It was as if a lawyer should confess judgment 
without first consulting his client. 

Mr. Roosevelt thought that this was not 
right. He also thought that there should be 
some official who should audit bills for sup- 
plies purchased for the various city depart- 
ments. Mr. Bird S. Coler, the Controller, as 
the financial head of the city, sought to have 
the law so changed that his office might audit 
the supply bills, and so that the law officer of 
the city should be compelled to consult him 
before admitting in court that the city had no 
defence against any suit brought to collect 
damages for injuries sustained or pay for 
goods furnished. 

When one of the Republican leaders heard 
that the Governor was working with the Con- 
troller to secure the passage of the necessary 
bills, he protested, saying: 

"Governor, you are building up a powerful 
rival to 3^ou next fall," referring to Mr. 
Coler's desire for the Democratic nomination 



i 



THE POLITICAL MAN 335 

for the Governorship. ]\Ir. Coler was not 
nominated till two 3'ears later, as it turned 
out. 

"Maybe so," replied Mr. Roosevelt, "but he 
is right and he is going to have those bills 
if I can get them through the Legislature 
for him." 

On another occasion other party leaders pro- 
tested against his advocacy of the measure 
providing for the appointment of a commis- 
sion of expert engineers to consider the best 
method of enlarging the Erie Canal. 

"It is suicide to do it," they urged, "for it 
will lose votes for you among the farmers and 
in the districts that elected you. It is bad 
politics." 

Mr. Roosevelt appreciated the force of the 
argument, but he did not yield. He simply 
shook his head and said : 

"You are right, but this Is a case where the 
few must give way for the benefit of the many. 
I realise that it seems unjust to the farmers 
to be taxed for improvements that will help 



236 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

bring produce from the West to compete 
with them, but the whole State must be con- 
sidered, and that canal proposition is in 
line with commercial progress. It must go 
through." 

When the Legislature hesitated in its sup- 
port of the measures he favoured, or in sup- 
port of his desire to secure the appointment of 
officers who had the confidence of the people, 
in distinction from professional politicians, 
he was urged to use the methods which other 
Governors had found effective, that is, to call 
the recalcitrant Senators and Assemblymen to 
the executive chamber and threaten to veto 
the bills in which they were interested unless 
they supported him. They knew the power 
that a Governor could exercise if he used such 
a weapon. Indeed, they were aware that a 
Democratic leader who had been Governor 
once exclaimed in indignation, when he heard 
of the rebellion of the Legislature against an- 
other Democratic Governor: 

"Why doesn't he threaten to veto their bills 



THE POLITICAL MAN 237 

if they don't come to time ? That is what the 
veto power is for." 

Mr. Roosevelt refused to be persuaded. 
"Their bills belong to their constituents and 
to the public," he said, "and I have no right 
to delay, much less to defeat, them. As I can- 
not do this, it is unfair to threaten them. I 
must win on the merits of the case or not at 
all. But I will win." 

When he insisted on the passage of a law 
taxing the franchises of public utility cor- 
porations, after classifying them as real 
estate, the politicians again told him that he 
was destroying his political future. He in- 
sisted that he was right and that the bill should 
be passed. The Legislature agreed to it in 
the last days of the session, but the bill was 
in imperfect shape. The Governor at once 
called the Legislature together again in spe- 
cial session and persuaded it to amend the 
measure in accordance with his wishes. 

This was in the spring of 1900, when the de- 
mand for his nomination for the Vice-Presi- 
dency was just beginning. 



XI 

THE POLITICAL MAN {concluded) 

The New York leaders, or some of them, were 
certain that Mr. Roosevelt could not be elected 
to the Governorship again if he were renomi- 
nated. They said that the large f ranchise-en- 
joying corporations from which they were 
accustomed to receive large campaign con- 
tributions would not give a cent if he were the 
candidate. 

This was the attitude of the politicians of 
his own State when the demand for his nomina- 
tion to the Vice-Presidency began to be heard 
in the West. These politicians were willing 
and anxious to get the complications of his 
candidacy out of the State campaign. Mr. 
Roosevelt himself did not wish to go to 
Washington, but was anxious for another tcrai 
as Governor to complete the work v> hich he had 
begun. The Vice-Presidency had no attrac- 



THE POLITICAL MAN 239 

tions for him. In April, 1900, he wrote from 
Albany to a friend : "Here I am occupied in 
trying not to be made Vice-Presidential candi- 
date. I prefer to try for the Governorship 
again ; whether I will be beaten or not I can- 
not tell ; I suppose I should certainly be beaten 
if it were not a Presidential year ; but this year 
there is a good chance of carrying the Go\^er- 
norship, too ; whether it is more than an even 
chance I should be afraid to say." 

In conversation v/ith his acquaintances he 
made similar remarks about his unwillingness 
to become Vice-President. To one such he 
said: 

"I don't want to sit up there in the Senate 
chamber for four years and say, 'All in favour 
of the motion signify it by saying "Aye," 
all opposed, "No," the motion is carried or 
lost,' as the case may be ; 'The Senator from 
such and such a State has the floor ;' and things 
like that. Besides, I'd have to keep quiet up 
there on the platform when that man [nam- 
ing a conspicuous anti-imperialist Senator] 



240 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

got up in his place and talked his confounded 
treason, when I should feel like going down on 
the floor and knocking his blamed head off !" 

He was not the candidate of the delegates 
from New York to the National Convention. 
They were inclined to support Timothy L. 
Woodruff, the Lieutenant-Governor of the 
State, rather than Theodore Roosevelt, the 
Governor. When asked a few years later by 
Mr. James B. Morrow what was the reason 
of his failure to secure the nomination, Mr. 
Woodruff replied : 

"Theodore Roosevelt's immense popularity 
in the West forced his candidacy on the dele- 
gates, notwithstanding his wish and determina- 
tion to stay in New York and run for the 
Governorship again. Back from Cuba but a 
short time, he was a striking and romantic per- 
sonality. I don't say I could have been nomi- 
nated, although seventy-two 'delegates from 
New York met in Philadelphia and indorsed 
my candidacy. It is true, however, that New 
York's demand for a place on the national 



THE POLITICAL MAN 241 

ticket is usually respected. I was in Wash- 
ington several months before the convention 
met. Mr. Hanna [the chairman of the Re- 
publican National Committee] sent for me. 
When I got to his room he sat down and put 
his knees against mine. 

" 'Timothy,' he said, 'I hear that you will be 
a candidate for Vice-President.' 

"I told him my friends had suggested it, but 
that my own mind was open on the subject. 

" 'But you are too young,' he argued. 

" 'So far as that goes,' I replied, 'I am three 
months and twenty-three days older than 
Theodore Roosevelt, and my son is a junior at 
Yale.' 

" 'Well,' he answered, winking his right eye, 
'you look too young.' " 

The demand for Mr. Roosevelt, as Mr. 
Woodruff said, was so strong that he could not 
resist it. Many of his friends, even so late 
as the day of his nomination by the Phila- 
delphia convention, advised him to refuse to 
allow his name to be presented. They told him 



243 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

that if he accepted he would be shelved for 
four years and his political career would be 
ended. Indeed, they believed that a plot had 
been laid by his enemies to bury him in the 
Vice-Presidency, and three or four years later 
some of these political enemies confessed that 
this had been their purpose. He was inclined 
to believe that the advice of his friends was 
good; but he finally jdelded to the pressure 
brought to bear upon him and, much against 
his will, allowed himself to be nominated. 
Then he made what the newspapers call a 
"whirlwind" canvass of the countrj^, and was 
elected. He went to Washington and took 
the oath of office in the Senate chamber, and 
assumed the duties of presiding officer of the 
smaller branch of Congress. 

On his first day in office there occurred an 
amusing illustration of his habit of doing 
what he thinks is expected of him, even in an 
unfamiliar situation. President McKinley 
and the Senators and other distinguished 
persons left the Senate chamber for the East 



THE POLITICAL MAN 243 

front of the Capitol, where the oath was to 
be administered to the President and where he 
was to make his inaugural address. No Sena- 
tor had thought to move an adjournment. 
Mr. Roosevelt, accordingly, concluded that he 
must not desert his post, and he knew that it 
was not consistent with the dignity of the 
Senate for him to declare it adjourned, on his 
own initiative. For a long time he remained 
alone on the Senate rostrum. Not another 
living creature was in the room. He was put 
away on a shelf and left there, indeed. Then 
Senator Heitfeld, of Idaho, went into the 
chamber on his way to the Democratic cloak- 
room to get his rain-coat, which he had left 
behind. He took in the situation at once, and 
with great solemnity addressed the Chair. 
What happened might have appeared in the 
Congressional Record something like this : 

Mr. Heitfeld. — Mr. President. 

The Vice-President. — The Senator from 
Idaho. 

Mr. Heitfeld. — I move that the Senate 
do now adjourn till 12 o'clock noon to-morrow. 



2U THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

The Vice-President (looking vastly re- 
lieved). — The Senator from Idaho moves that 
the Senate do now adjourn until 12 o'clock 
noon to-morrow. Is there objection? The 
Chair hears none, and the Senate stands ad- 
journed until the hour named. 

Mr. Roosevelt emphasised this announcement 
with a hearty thump of the gavel and rushed 
down from the rostrum and thanked the Sena- 
tor for coming to his rescue. When he be- 
came President, Senator Heitfeld was one of 
his first callers, and Mr. Roosevelt asked, as 
he grasped his hand: 

"Do you remember when you and I were the 
whole Senate.^ I want to thank you again for 
what you did that day. If it hadn't been that 
you forgot your rain-coat and had to return 
for it there is no telling how long I should have 
had to preside over an empty Senate." 

Another instance of the effect of the cere- 
monious side of office upon him will go as 
well here as anywhere. It was on the evening 
of the first diplomatic reception after he be- 
came President. He was standing in his place, 



THE POLITICAL MAN 245 

flanked by the suitable supporters, and the 
brilHant line of guests was passing before him. 
There were ambassadors and ministers pleni- 
potentiary, attaches, naval and military, sec- 
retaries of legation, gorgeous uniforms, and 
all the trappings of an elaborate State func- 
tion. In the line, after the official guests, was 
a lady, an intimate friend of the President. 
She expected that he would take especial 
notice of her ; but he only bowed formally over 
her hand as he did over the hands of the others. 

Later in the evening Mr. Roosevelt ran across 
her in the reception-room and greeted her with 
great friendliness. 

"Why didn't you come in time for the recep- 
tion?" he asked. 

"I did," she replied, "and you didn't even 
recognise me." 

"Impossible!" exclaimed the President. 
Then he whispered, "To tell the truth, Mrs. 

, I was so fearful I would not do the right 

thing I could not think of anybody but my- 
self!" 



24G THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

To return to the political side of his career. 
He had begun to adjust himself to four years 
of life in Washington as presiding officer of 
the Senate. As already noted, he considered 
reading law that he might have a lucrative 
profession when his term expired, a profes- 
sion whose returns were more certain than 
those of literature. 

Tlien came the assassination of President 
McKinley. 

"There are few more trying positions that a 
man can occupy than that into which an 
American Vice-President is forced by the sud- 
den death of the President. As Vice-President 
he has been elected to an office with little power. 
Its influence over legislation is so slight that 
it is difficult to discover it, and its demands 
on the time of its occupant are usually limited 
to the hours when he Is in the chair. 

To be suddenly lifted from this inconspicu- 
ous place into the most powerful executive 
office in the world, at the head of one of the 
greatest nations, is enough to try the stuff in 



THE POLITICAL MAN 247 

any man. They say that when Vice-President 
Arthur heard of the assault upon President 
Garfield he spoke not a word. He sat down 
and stared into vacancy for fifteen minutes, 
and when he rose he had the manner of a man 
who was staggering under a great burden that 
had just been put upon his shoulders. / 

The first effect of the news of the assault 
upon President McKinley was to overpower 
Mr. Roosevelt with grief for the injury to a 
friend. 

"He must live. He must live," was his 
thought and his word. 

He received every favourable report with 
delight, as it indicated the fulfilment of his 
wishes, and when it was announced that the 
danger was over, he went back from Buffalo 
to the Adirondacks to resume his interrupted 
vacation. When the President died, and he 
was summoned to Buffalo again, he had it out 
with himself in his ride alone across the State, 
and was ready to announce that as the country 
had elected William McKinley to the Presi- 



248 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

dency, it desired the policies of McKInley to 
be pursued, and he would respect that desire. 
So he asked the McKInley Cabinet to remain 
with him to assist him In making his adminis- 
tration as near as possible as the dead Presi- 
dent would have made It. 

Such respect for the popular will in such cir- 
cumstances Is rare, indeed, and when the final 
estimate of Mr. Roosevelt's career is written 
this revelation of the man's loyalty to the 
ideals of popular government will receive due 
weight. 

Neither will the other significant fact be 
lost sight of that on his first Sunday In Wash- 
ton as President he went quietly to the little 
Reformed Church which he had been accus- 
tomed to attend. Here he joined in the 
prayers offered, and sang with the congrega- 
tion, and nodded approvingly as the preacher 
expressed sentiments with which he agreed. 

He entered upon his new duties with char- 
acteristic vigour. While trying to carry out 
the McKInley policies, he had to do so in the 



THE POLITICAL MAN 349 

Roosevelt way. That way is different from 
the usual manner of Presidents, as appeared 
when he began to meet people in the White 
House. A man who was present has described 
how he received the people who went to see 
him one day in 1901, when he had been 
President about two months. To read what 
this man said is almost as good as being 
there in person. Every phase of humanity 
was gathered in the waiting-room, when the 
President bounded into the room unannounced, 
and seized the hand of the first person he 
saw. 

"Glad to see you," he exclaimed as he 
grasped the hand of the visitor. There is 
an emphasis on the "you" which startles the 
visitor with its ring of candour. But scarcely 
has he recovered from his astonishment suf- 
ficiently to begin his speech, before the Presi- 
dent has darted half-way across the circle, 
leaving outstretched hands tingling with the 
rush of blood caused by the firm Presidential 
grasp, and startled ears trying to realise that 



350 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

into them has been hurled the assurance that 
he was glad to see them. 

When the President was not "Glad to see 
you" he was "Delighted to see you," our in- 
formant assures us. Statesmen, office-seekers, 
giggling brides, tuft-hunters, notoriety-seek- 
ers, stately ladies, capitalists, labourers. Dem- 
ocrats, Republicans, Populists, all get the 
same greeting, the same nervous but firm hand- 
shake, the same glitter of the eye. And then 
darts away this bundle of nerves and steel. 

To the visiting delegations who appeared 
with a spokesman and with the motive of sug- 
gesting something of value either to the nation 
or to themselves, these early methods of the 
President were perhaps displayed to the best 
advantage. A party of men from Montana 
were present on the day in question, and they 
desired to impress on the President the neces- 
sity and the value of their irrigation plans. 

"We would like to have a word with you 
about irrigation, Mr. President," the spokes- 
man began. He was immediately cut short by 



THE POLITICAL MAN 251 

the President saying in a tone that was heard 
all over the room and out in the hallway : 

"Yes, oh yes. You favour irrigation, do you? 
Well, so do I. I have urged it in my message. 
Here, Cortelyou, get me a printed copy of 
my message so I can read to these gentlemen 
what I am going to say to Congress on the 
subject of irrigation." 

The printed copy was produced at once and 
the President read so everybody within earshot 
could hear what he intended to ask Congress 
to do on the irrigation question. 

A tall man, moving about with a dignified 
stride, next caught the President's eye, as the 
Montana delegation backed away. What the 
man of mystery and dignity said could not be 
heard, but what the President said could be. 

"Yes, yes, I know you and I am delighted to 
see you," said Mr. Roosevelt, "but you must 
put your application in writing. Yes. Put it 
in writing and send it to me with your indorse- 
ments and I'll see what can be done." 

The man leaned forward and whispered 



252 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

again, this time his face crimson with blushes 
of embarrassment. 

"Oh, I know all about that. Yes, certainly 
I do. And I have no doubt you would fill the 
bill. But I do not know whether or not there 
is a vacancy. Don't you know that it Is im- 
possible for me to keep all these things in my 
head? Write out your application. Write it 
out, and then send it to me with your indorse- 
ments. Come to see me again, soon. Good- 
bye." 

"Ah, there's Mr. White!" exclaimed the 
President as he espied a scholarly -looking man 
with short grey beard sitting modestly and 
patiently back in a corner away from the 
jostling crowd. "Go Into my office, Mr. White. 
I shall be there in two or three minutes." Mr. 
White, who is a New York editor, did as he was 
directed. 

"Glad to see you," "Delighted to see you," 
"Glad to see 3'ou," "Delighted," then rang out 
in greeting as the President whirled around 
through the room. The people grabbed at his 



THE POLITICAL MAN 253 

hand as it was extended, or rather, shot out 
at them. 

"Hello, Senator Proctor, how are you? I 
want to see you in my office directly. Please 
wait a little while until I am through with Mr. 
White, then come in. You know I am depend- 
ing on you as one of my main props." 

The rugged Vermont statesman said he 
would wait, and on the President dashed to an- 
other bunch of visitors. In three or four min- 
utes he had squeezed twenty or more hands, 
and the second crowd of the day was disposed 
of. With the next crowd there came strid- 
ing in a handsome rosy-cheeked lad, gaily 
dressed in a military uniform that was 
decorated with all the distinguishing colours 
of the various arms of the Army and insignia 
of the various grades of the Navy. Into a 
large upholstered chair this youth plumped 
his roly-poly form near the door leading to 
the President's office. The crowd thickened so 
fast that the doorkeeper refused to let any 
more people in till the congestion in the room 



254 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

was relieved. Again the President rushed into 
the room, and bumped into the youth in the 
chair. 

"Ah, so this is Master , is it ?" Mr. Roose- 
velt inquired as he seized the right hand of the 
lad. "Well, I received your telegram from 
Baltimore last night telling me that you would 
call on me to-day. I am delighted to see you, 
sir — delighted to see you." 

"Mr. President," the boy began, in a deter- 
mined effort to deliver his carefully prepared 
speech, "I am travelling " 

"Yes, yes," interrupted the President. "I 
know you are, and I am glad to see you. Mr. 
Cortelyou will look after you." 

As the President was surrounded by the eddy- 
ing crowd the brave little boy, twelve years 
old, continued his speech thus: 

"I am travelling salesman for a typewriter. 
My father was a miner in Pennsylvania, and 
when he died a few months ago he left my 
mother a large family of children, but no prop- 
erty. I am making the living for the family. 



THE POLITICAL MAN 955 

and I have brought you as a Thanksgiving 
present one of my typewriters. Accept it, Mr. 
President, and make my mother's heart glad. 
All our family think you are the greatest man 
that was ever President of the United States." 

There was a kind, gentle, fatherly tone in the 
President's voice as he held both the hands of 
this courageous American fighting his own 
way, and spoke some encouraging words. 

"God bless 3^ou," said the President a little 
while later, as he encountered the lad in an- 
other part of the room, and a merry-faced old 
lady who was waiting her turn to greet the 
President wiped the tears from her eyes that 
came unbidden as she heard the benediction. 

It was now noon, and the reception-room had 
been filled and emptied five times. For an hour 
and a half longer the crowd continued to pour 
in. A pompous man accompanied by a party 
of women grabbed the President's hand and 
began to say, "Mr. President, we could not 
leave Washington without calling to pay our 
respects. I sat on the stand when you spoke in 



256 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

my town in Colorado last year, and I told the 
ladies you would remember me." 

"Certainly, certainly," assented Mr. Roose- 
velt, and before the women finished their 
speeches of congratulation he landed in an 
opposite corner of the room, where a man 
w^ished to impress on him the desirability of 
"speaking out in your message in no uncertain 
tone on the currency question." 

"I believe my message will please you on that 
point," Mr. Roosevelt assured the man. 
"Here, I'll read you what I have written on 
that topic." 

And the President, in his usual way, read 
that part of his message, to the great delight 
of his listener, who signified his agreement by 
vigorous nods of his head. 

This was at the beginning of his adminis- 
tration. It was pretty generally admitted 
then that he had not the composure and dig- 
nity which characterises the manner of older 
men who have risen to high place more gradu- 
ally. But as the months passed he acquired 



THE POLITICAL MAN 25T 

greater poise, he spoke less loudly in greeting 
his callers, and showed more appreciation of 
the sensibilities of those asking favours. The 
superficial evidences of nervousness disap- 
peared. His great responsibilities sobered 
him and he began to impress his callers as a 
man of firm will and steady mental poise. Al- 
though there has been a change in his manner 
he still deals frankly and insists that others 
shall be frank with him, just as in the begin- 
ning. 

This insistence on frankness has brought con- 
fusion to more than one man who has neg- 
lected to tell him the whole truth. Dn one oc- 
casion he rescinded the appointment of a 
United States Marshal because the man had 
misled him as to his record. The man had the 
reputation of being a drunkard and broiler, 
and Senator Hoar opposed him. When the 
Senator protested the President told him that 
the man had been one of the bravest soldiers in 
his regiment, and that he had reformed. 
Later Senator Hoar learned that the man had 



258 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

served a term in prison for horse-stealing, and 
went to the White House to make further 
protest. 

"He didn't tell me that," said the President. 
"I'll telegraph him about it." 

When the reply came it was that the im- 
prisonment happened fifteen years before and 
the man said he thought it had been for- 
gotten. 

Then the President sent word to him: "If 
you had told me that in the first place it would 
have been all right ; but you lied to me and 
that settles it." 

In the preparation of his first message to 
Congress, sections of which we have seen him 
reading to his callers, he sought the assistance 
and advice of the men who were familiar with 
the subjects he intended to discuss. 

"Before he finished it," remarked one Sena- 
tor, "he consulted every one in whose judg- 
ment he had confidence. He even did me the 
honour to summon me here from my home in 
the West for consultation. When I arrived 



THE POLITICAL MAN 359 

I found him so busy he was compelled to ask 
me to dictate to a stenographer my views on 
certain questions of pressing importance, and 
send them to him in that shape." 

This has been his practice, to take no im- 
portant action without previous consultation 
with the people best informed on the matter 
involved. Before he took the unprecedented 
course of ordering an investigation into the 
grievances of the striking coal-miners in 1903, 
he had many conferences with people repre- 
senting both sides of the controversy. His 
final determination to recognise the Panama 
revolutionists in the autumn of the same year 
was not reached till he had taken the advice 
of the men who understood the situation on 
the Isthmus. But when he did act he 
took all the responsibility himself, and 
he was naturally pleased when his course 
was approved by those with whom he 
talked. 

Mr. William C. Adamson, of Georgia, was 
one of the callers at the White House on the 



260 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

day after the republic of Panama was recog- 
nised by the United States. 

"Congressman," said the President, shaking 
his hand, "I am always glad to see you, but 
especially so at this time." 

"Mr. President," replied the Congressman, 
"I am glad to meet you and see that you 
are well and buoyant. I called thinking I 
had business, but find that it is not ready 
to present to you, so I determined to 
wait, and in the language of Br'er Rab- 
bit, 'pass the time o' day wid you,' before 
leaving." 

"Speaking of Br'er Rabbit," said the Presi- 
dent, "that Jack rabbit on the Isthmus jumped 
one time too many for his good." 

"I imagine the surprise and consternation of 
that rabbit," Mr. Adamson rejoined, "when, 
after jumping for a race down the Isthmus, 
he found himself confronted by a President 
who was not too bow-legged to head him in the 
lane." 

The President enjoyed this metaphorical 



THE POLITICAL MAN 261 

compliment so much that he repeated it to a 
number of his callers. 

After he has taken the advice of various 
people, it seems to be generally agreed that he 
uses his own judgment. Elihu Root, then 
Secretary of War, called attention to the 
dominating will of the President in the spring 
of 1903 at a dinner in his honour. Mr. Root 
was talking about the Manchurian ques- 
tion and the possible effect of Russian control 
of the territory on the course of the United 
States in maintaining its rights in the East. 

"We must never forget, gentlemen," said he, 
"that the War Department is only an emer- 
gency bureau, and that the controlling port- 
folio in the present administration is held 
by the Secretary of Peace, Theodore Roose- 
velt." 

It was only a few weeks later that Mr. Roose- 
velt at a public dinner in Charlottesville, 
Virginia, set forth his own views of the 
proper attitude of the United States in its 
foreisrn relations. 



269 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

"I want the United States to conduct itself 
in foreign affairs," said he, "as you of Vir- 
ginia believe a private gentleman should con- 
duct himself among his fellows. I ask that we 
handle ourselves with a view never to wrong 
the weak and never to submit to injury from 
the strong. 

"Another thing : A gentleman does not boast, 
bluster, bully; he does not insult others. I 
wish our country always to behave with con- 
sideration for others ; never to speak in a man- 
ner that is insulting or might wound the sus- 
ceptibilities of any foreign nation; never to 
threaten, never to boast, but when we feel that 
our interest and our honour demand that as a 
nation we take a certain position, to take that 
position and then make it good. 

"Speaking to the younger gentlemen pres- 
ent, I wish to state that I myself was once 
young, and in those days I lived in the cow 
country in the West, and we had a proverb 
running, 'Don't draw unless you mean to 
shoot.' It was a middling good proverb, and 



THE POLITICAL MAN 263 

it applies just as much in international as in 
private affairs. 

"I do not wish us ever as a nation to take a 
position from which we have to retreat. Do 
not let us assume any position unless we are 
prepared to say that we have got to keep it. 
As a nation we must hereafter play a big part 
in the world. It is not open to us to decide 
whether the part we play, we of the United 
States, shall be great or small. That has been 
decided for us by the course of events. A 
small nation can honourably play a small 
part; a great nation, no. A great nation 
must play a great part. All it can decide is 
whether it will play that great part well or 
ill. I know you too well, my fellow-country- 
men, to have any doubt as to what your de- 
cision will be." 

We have the testimony of his Attorney-Gen- 
eral, as well as that of his Secretary of War, 
that the policies of his administration are the 
policies of Theodore Roosevelt, adopted of 
course after consultation with his advisers and 



264 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

cordially supported and furthered by those 
associated with him in their execution. It was 
in explanation of his retirement from the 
Cabinet to accept the senatorship from Penn- 
sylvania that Attorney-General Knox said in 
the summer of 1904 : 

"I called up President Roosevelt over the 
long-distance telephone and laid the situa- 
tion before him, asking his advice. The Presi- 
dent, after listening to me, said that as Penn- 
sylvania is such an overwhelmingly Repub- 
lican State, and as this appointment might 
open to me a long term of public service and 
at the same time it would tend to promote har- 
mony among the factions of the party in the 
State, he thought it was my duty to accept 
the appointment." 

"But don't you believe that your leaving the 
Cabinet at this time will seriously interfere 
with President Roosevelt's plans for curbing 
the trusts?" Mr. Knox was asked. 

"I do not," was the reply. "My leaving the 
Cabinet can have no effect upon the continu- 



i 



THE POLITICAL MAN 265 

ance of the anti-trust policy of the adminis- 
tration." 

Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward his nomina- 
tion for the Presidency and his remarks on 
that subject were as unconventional as many 
of his other acts. In May, 1903, when the 
party in Ohio was divided on the question of 
indorsing him, and Senator Hanna was urging 
that the indorsement could as well be given 
the next year, Mr. Roosevelt's secretary issued 
this statement : 

"In speaking of the sudden political devel- 
opments in Ohio the President this afternoon 
said: 'I have not asked any man for his sup- 
port. I have had nothing whatever to do with 
raising the issue of my indorsement. Sooner 
or later it was bound to arise, and inasmuch 
as it has now arisen, of course those who 
favour my administration and my nomination 
will indorse, and those who do not, oppose.' " 

He has not been ashamed of his ambitions, 
neither has he hesitated to express a high opin- 
ion of the dignity of public service. The last 



266 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

sentences from an address delivered to the 
students of the University of Cahfornia bear 
on this subject. He was talking about the 
service that Leonard Wood, William H. Taft, 
the graduates of the Naval and Military 
academies, and others had done. 

"Taft and Wood and their fellows," said he, 
"are spending, or have spent, the best years 
of their prime in doing a work which means 
to them a pecuniary loss at the best, a bare 
livelihood while they are doing it, and are do- 
ing it gladly because they realise the truth 
that the highest privilege that can be given 
to any man is the privilege of serving his 
country, his fellow- Americans." 

When his party nominated him for the Presi- 
dency in the summer of 1904 all precedents 
were broken. No previous President who had 
entered the high office through the Vice-Presi- 
dency after the death of the President was 
ever before nominated to succeed himself. In- 
deed, Mr. Roosevelt's first participation in 
a national convention was marked by his ear- 



THE POLITICAL MAN 267 

nest efforts to prevent such a President from 
receiving the nomination. But when he be- 
came a candidate, no one was named in oppo- 
sition to him in the convention, and he was the 
unanimous choice of the delegates. 

He took no pubHc part in the campaign for 
his election, till toward its close, when charges 
affecting his personal honour were made. 
Then he issued a long statement, in the course 
of which he declared that the charges that he 
or his campaign committee were blackmailing 
corporations and were promising "to take 
care of" the corporations which contributed to 
the fund to secure his election were "unquali- 
fiedly and atrociously false," and concluded: 
"If elected I shall go into the Presidency 
unhampered by any pledge, promise, or under- 
standing of any kind, sort, or description, save 
my promise, made openly to the American 
people, that so far as in my power lies I shall 
see to it that every man has a square deal, no 
less and no more." 

Several weeks before election a prominent 



268 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

Republican leader who believed that he would 
win implored him not to commit himself 
against the acceptance of a third term until 
the arguments in its favour could be presented. 
Mr. Roosevelt, turning to Attorney-General 
Moody, who was present, remarked: 

"I cannot with propriety make any public 
statement now, before I am elected for a 
second term, but at the very earliest moment I 
shall smash that idea with all the energy I 
can command." 

Secretary Moody indorsed this plan, and 
Mr. Roosevelt did not wait longer than was 
necessary to "smash the idea" that he was a 
candidate for nomination in 1908, for at half- 
past ten o'clock on the night of the election, 
when the result was no longer in doubt, he 
issued this statement: 

"I am deeply sensible of the honour done me 
by the American people in thus expressing 
their confidence in wliat I have done and have 
tried to do. I appreciate to the full the solemn 
responsibility this confidence imposes upon me. 



THE POLITICAL MAN 269 

and I shall do all that in my power lies not to 
forfeit it. On the 4th of March next I shall 
have served three and a half years, and this 
three and a half years constitute my first 
term. The wise custom which limits the Presi- 
dent to two terms regards the substance and 
not the form, and under no circumstances will 
I be a candidate for, or accept, another nomi- 
nation." 

He received the largest popular majority 
ever given to any candidate, and even carried 
Missouri, which had been Democratic for more 
than thirty years. He was pleased, as well 
he might be, though he was not surprised. 
They say that he was one of the calmest per- 
sons in the White House on the evening of the 
election while the returns were coming in. 

A little more than two weeks after the elec- 
tion he visited the Louisiana Purchase Exposi- 
tion in St. Louis, making several brief 
speeches on the way. A large crowd gathered 
to greet him as he passed through Indian- 
apolis. He thanked them for their presence 



270 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

and said ho appreciated it deeply. Then an 
enthusiastic man in the crowd, desiring to 
attract attention to the large Roosevelt ma- 
jority in Ohio, called out: 

"What is the matter with Ohio?" 

"Not a thing," said the President, "and I 
want to tell you that there were a lot of other 
good ones." Then with a beaming smile he 
leaned over the rail on the car platform and 
inquired, "What is the matter with Missouri?" 

And the crowd yelled its appreciation of the 
situation. When he reached St. Louis a din- 
ner in his honour was given by the officers of 
the fair, at w hich he said : 

"I was lately reading a speech of Lincoln 
after his re-election. I cannot quote it verba- 
tim, but he sa3^s, 'As long as I have been in this 
office I have never intentionally planted a 
thorn in any man's bosom. I am gratified that 
my countrymen have seen fit to continue me in 
office, but it does not satisfy me that any one 
has suffered by the result.' I feel that I should 
approach my duties in that spirit. A man 



THE POLITICAL MAN 271 

should have no sense of elation In view of the 
infinite responsibility and of the weight of 
duty he owes to his fellow-citizens. He should 
realise that whether there is a difference before 
election, the President is President of all the 
people, of every section, socially and indus- 
trially — no West, no North, or East, or South 
— and he is bound 'with malice toward none 
and charity to all' to strive to conduct him- 
self toward his duties as they arise so that 
the result may be for the good of the common 
country." 

In spite of Mr. Roosevelt's announced deter- 
mination not to accept another nomination for 
the Presidency, many men with various motives 
have declared themselves in favour of what 
they call a third term for him. But his atti- 
tude remains unchanged. In the spring of 
1906 he was present at a dinner at which one 
half the guests were men whose availability 
for the Presidency had been discussed by the 
political leaders. He said to them : 

"I shall not be a candidate for the Presidency 



272 THE MANY-SIDED ROOSEVELT 

again, but I'll be delighted to accept a place 
in the Cabinet of any of you." 

Mr. W. A. Conant, of Colorado Springs, 
Colorado, who was a delegate to the first Re- 
publican National Convention, wrote to him 
in June, 1906, that he hoped to vote for him 
in 1908. Mr. Roosevelt's secretary replied: 

"The President thanks you for your letter of 
the 17th instant. He cordially appreciates 
your kind expressions concerning himself. He 
says, however, that you will have to vote for 
some other Republican next time." 



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